#112 Eric Telly - Strength & Conditioning / Landow Performance
Eric Telly - Sports performance coach and manager at Landow Performance of Colorado. He works with a wide variety of athletes with his biggest population of athletes coming from the UFC Professional Fighters and the MMA community. Eric is also a Navy veteran who served 5 years in active duty and then in the Naval Reserve while attending College. Although not a native of Colorado, Eric attended middle school, high school, and college in Colorado expanding his career in sports science anf high-level athletic training. Tune in as Eric Telly joins Bobby Marshall in studio to discuss strength training, strength and conditioning, social media, family, Colorado, archery, outdoor life, and much more.
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Eric Telly - Strength & Conditioning / Landow Performance
Our returning guest for this episode and our first episode of the year is my friend Eric Telly. He's a strengthened conditioning coach from Landow Performance. Eric works with some of the top professional athletes in the UFC, NFL, Major League Baseball, and many other sports. When Eric is not training professional athletes to get better at whatever their craft is, he's also helping the general public, kids and much more, but above all that, he's a great person. I always enjoy sitting down with him. This was a great episode. We had a few technical difficulties right at the very beginning, but other than that, it was a great conversation, and I hope you enjoy the first episode of 2023.
Happy New Year. It’s great to see you, Eric.
Good to see you too.
Cheers to the new year, and I'm happy to have you back. This is your second round here.
I'm stoked to be here.
What have you been up to? It's been quite a while because when I was doing the end of the year, we were putting together the end of the year post, I was like, “I got to get all these people back in here. It's going by so fast.” It doesn't seem like that long ago.
It doesn't. I felt like I was here, but it's been busy. I'm keeping busy with performance coaching at Landow Performance and being a dad to my son. I got married at the end of ’21.
Congratulations. No more fun for you. I'm joking.
It's a different type of fun.
Yes, like picking out drapes and remodeling things.
Not at all. She knows me, and I don't get down like that. I’m super fortunate. I've been busy trying to find ways to cultivate more experiences. I was talking to my son, and I was talking about that. I was like, “It's the end of the year. You got your Christmas presents,” and stuff is cool to get when you are a kid. The one thing that I'm starting to appreciate as I get older are experiences and memories because those are things that it costs money to get a plane ticket to get you somewhere, but once you are there, are we in the moment? Are we taking it all in?
A few things you start to appreciate as you get older are experiences and memories.
Are we burning memories into our minds and then sharing an experience, or are we pulling our phones out and taking selfies and that kind of stuff? Which is cool, and I get it because you want to capture those moments and memories. There's something about moving forward that I want to build more memories and experiences and whatever that looks like, both professionally and personally. That's where my mind's at.
You are spot on with it. I'm in the same boat as the older I have gotten. I don't think it hit me until 40. It's like if I live to be 80, if I'm lucky with all the shit I have done in my past, I'm halfway there. It's like an eye-opener. Coming up in the contra industry and stuff, when I toured the world, it was such an awesome thing for me. It's all I wanted to do. It’s the only reason I got into it. Photography has always been another passion of mine, so I always traveled with a camera, but it was like a 35-millimeter.
When I first started touring, I was still shooting on film. I didn't think I could afford a digital camera. I then finally got a little Sony point-and-shoot, but it wasn't the same quality. It didn't feel the same, and it wasn't that art experience because we were talking about something that was smaller than my iPhone at the time. It was a great camera. I’m not knocking it or anything. I took some incredible photos of it, but it lost its sense. I was taking it in because I had to find composure and because on film, you only got 36 or maybe 38 shots if you are lucky, and that 38 shots might be half a photo or whatever it was.
You then got to take it somewhere. You got to make sure it stays dark, and I had all these canisters of film. It was a different thing. That was the late-’90s, and it was hard to find a spot then that would develop stuff because we were moving into that digital age. The one thing I realized is you are looking at composure and trying to capture those moments and take in all those moments instead of being that rapid shot like I'm going to take a photo of everything. When I'm sitting on the plane with no WiFi, then I'm going to delete them.
How many people do you see sitting on a plane checking off photos? You are spot on. It made me realize it because now, if you go to a concert, major sporting event, or anything like that, it's like people have their phones out and are watching it through their phone, so they have the right frame for whatever video they are trying to take.
I'm as guilty of it when my kids are performing at a football game, ballet, or whatever it is. I have been guilty of that, too, like trying to capture the play. You don't want to miss it, but you are lost in the moment. I have tried to be aware of that, and one way to do it is don't take your fucking phone with you.
Don't take your phone or understand before you go into that venue or event to give yourself some rules and some guidelines like, “I'm going to take some photos or capture this part and put it away.” It's funny that you bring that up because I’m going to sporting events. I went to a concert. My son is in percussion in his middle school band, and it’s surprising. Every single parent, the second they start, it's this.
You are like looking around iPads and shit too.
I get it. You want to capture moments, but remember, I'm trying to keep myself in check and be like, “These are moments, and then I'm going to put this thing down because once you step back, everybody else does it,” and I'm totally guilty of it. I'm not considering and acting like I'm better than anybody. Once you see it, you are like, “There are a lot of phones, and everyone is staring through their screen.”
They then are going to go lay in bed and watch it at the end of the night to take it in. You are like, “That was fucking amazing.”
I don't think anybody ever watches it.
I feel like even if you are watching it, you are not taking it in the same way. Let's say you are watching Anthony Kiedis jump around on stage, Flea plays the bass, or any of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Every one of them is totally different, and that video, you could sit there and watch it and go, “That was incredible,” but you've missed the moment.
It's like people that take videos of 4th of July fireworks. You are not going to watch that again. You might for a second, but it's not the same feel, it's not the same sound, and it's not what your eye is capturing and then it's going to take up cloud space.
It's like watching fights. You are a UFC fan. You train a bunch of those guys. There are those monumental fights that I will go back and watch on Fight Pass, but it's not this because you know the outcome. You know how long the fight's going to be by looking at the time code on the video. That's one of my complaints with ESPN+. If I haven't watched the fights, I know how long it's gone by looking at it. I'm like, “This is only three minutes. Something happened,” even if I don't know the outcome, and I have totally kept myself in the dark from Instagram and all that stuff. There's something about watching it at the moment. I have a hard time watching sports unless they are live. I won't watch the Denver Broncos after the fact. I will watch the highlights.
I'm the same way. Especially when it comes to fights, I'm going to get the update on my phone. I'm going to know exactly what the outcome is, the timestamp, and everything. I could go back and watch, and I might go back and watch, but it's not a guarantee. It's funny because you bring up the UFC guys and the fighters. Being in the back and watching those guys go through their preparation and warmup, I’m catching glimpses and taking a couple of photos of guys getting their hands wrapped. Cool moment, but then the phone goes away.
Watching a warmup series and shooting a little ten-second video, but then the phone goes away because there's so much that happens that's just, “Am I here right now in the back with these guys or this group of people?” These guys are getting ready to walk out and have got their fight music picked out. The crowd is going crazy because they are getting ready to walk through this curtain and chase their dream.
I get to be a part of this behind-the-scene stuff, and I don't want to be that guy in the back recording every single second from behind the scenes. There's something cool to be to being behind the scenes and being in those moments. Some of the coolest memories I have, I don't even have on my camera or my phone. Maybe a group picture, but then it's the stories of we went here and did this. We had this silly conversation about that. All these memories are spinning in my head right now. It's cool to rehash those, and when you get around the guys and the girls, they'd be like, “Remember when you sit down?” It's so much fun.
There are photos I cherish, and there's something about being in the moment and taking a photo, too, coming from a photography background. I love taking photos with the people I have had here. After the fact, everybody seems to be in a good mood when they leave 99% of them. We have had a few that haven't been. I like that moment of capturing a photo. I'm glad. We brought this up in the last episode. I was at Super Bowl 50, which was one of those moments, like you said, “I got to pinch myself. Am I standing on the field with my favorite team at the Super Bowl on the sideline?” Not even in the seats, like right behind the bench if I wanted to be or pretty much anywhere on the field, except for being on the actual field. It’s anywhere on the sidelines.
At that moment, I realized like, “I am not going to be sitting here taking videos.” I very easily could have had my phone out when Von Miller sacked Cam Newton for pretty much the whole game, in my opinion. There were a ton of moments of the guys warming up, but everybody else around me, all my coworkers and friends, were all taking videos. After the fact, I was like, “Send me what you got,” and I have a ton of fucking video now, and I didn't have to take any of it. I took in all the moments. I did take a couple of selfies.
There was one moment when I did pull out my phone and recorded something. Terrell Davis was walking right by me with the Super Bowl trophy to present it to the stage. You got to get that. I was like, “I can't believe I'm this close.” Other than that, I was glad I took in the moment. I’m even having trouble that the more and more I do this, I appreciate these conversations where I get to sit down with somebody in person.
The virtual ones are cool, too, if we can't connect in person because we are still locked in. We are still involved in a conversation, even in a digital space. You are still having a conversation with somebody, but it made me realize how much I dislike Instagram and a lot of these posts. I love keeping up with my friends, and I love the fact that my friends post stuff that I want to see. I want to see the new blades that Bito or Half Face Blades is putting out. I love seeing those every week.
I now realized that they were starting to place ads in between. It's people I don't even follow, and I got all this bullshit of people's Reels and stuff that I don't want to watch. I didn't subscribe to you. Towards the end of the year, I was trying to make this thing, and I checked out during the holidays. We didn't record any episode for an entire week. I didn't do anything with the show.
New Year's Eve, I’ve approved the little video that the production team made for that. I gave them the guidelines prior to it, and they sent me proof, and that was pretty much it. I posted it, but I tried to disconnect from it, and then I came back to looking at it. A lot of the people that I follow are all about like, “This is my new workout program,” and I appreciate that. It is a business deal, but I got tired of hearing it.
It's an awful lot of noise.
Not that I don't believe in what these people are doing, either. I'm sure it's all good.
To your point, and I have seen this, where it went from you having to look somebody up to follow them and get connected. Now it's like, “You liked this post, or you like this page, so you might like this, or you might like this person.” It's like, “I might not.” I watched a midget ride a horse one time. I don't want to see every small person riding a horse. I'm going to get in trouble for that one. There's a joke in there.
I have tried to slim some stuff down, but I'm not a big poster on social media. I do it because I follow my athletes and my clients. I watch other coaches and get inspired by other people, and then I want to do it. I don't want to post a picture of my watch and try to be Jocko. I don't want to post a run with my shirt off and be Goggins. I’m not trying to be anybody. I'm trying to be me.
I get inspired by these pieces, and I get motivated, but we all know that motivation is a fleeting thing. You see it, and you get inspired. Now go do something. That's what I'm trying to get done. I know there are people out there that wish I would post more and be like, “Add different content and do this and do that. How come you don't?” I'm doing other stuff, and it's not that I don't care. I get wrapped up in my own world.
Motivation is a fleeting thing. You see it, you get inspired, now go do something.
I'm in the same boat. I don't think I have made a post in a month or something, and I don't care. It's been great for us too, on the other hand, for the show. Some of the connections I have made and the people we have had reach out to us. You and I connected there originally. We did.
I think it's through this medium and then through social media. I don't know if you guys have ever connected at all, but there’s Anthony Longo from the Warriors Choice Foundation.
We have gone back and forth, and I want to do something with him in person. From what I can tell, he's a great guy and from what I hear from everybody and shout-out to him.
He has talked about, “When I come to Denver, I want to do something. We can link up, and I'd love to sit down with the guy from The Mountain Side,” and I'm like, “Hell, yes.”
He's got a spot here. They can bring a dog if they want. I'd love that.
I will bring Rosie with me. Stuff like that is the positive and the benefit of social media, but I get wrapped up in the noise too.
It's getting so deluding now. I wish there were an option to turn that on or off. There should be a toggle. I would pay $299 a month if I didn't have to see all that other stuff, and I could see Warrior Choice Post, Half Face Blades, Tim Kennedy, and whoever I subscribe to can. There's so much that gets lost in all that noise that I get fed up with it. Maybe I'm not seeing all the stuff that I want to see from Derek Wolfe, Luke Caudillo, Marc Montoya, or my friends.
Maybe that's the direction it's going to where it becomes this paid experience to where you can do that exclusive component and reduce some of the clutter. It's almost like an ad-free subscription to something. Who knows?
Forget Instagram altogether. It's awesome to have you here. One thing, too, going back to those moments with your phone and that stuff, is I have been doing some work at Comedy Works down in Denver, which has been awesome. It's a venue where before you go in to watch the comic, they put your phone in a Yondr bag.
You get to take it with you. It's about the size that you fit a plus phone in it. You can't text, and you can't do anything, but you still have your phone with you, and it makes you watch that experience and do that. At any time, you can walk out the door if you have an emergency. You need to use your phone, or you forgot to send an email to somebody. You can walk out, and the door staff will un-click your phone, and then it goes back in the bag if you want to go back in, but it’s super cool that they do that.
It is. I went to a comedy show years ago, and I remember one of the first things that came over the PAs was a reminder to make sure that you are not pulling out your cell phones and that you are not recording this. You'll be asked to leave. I get it. The guy or comedian on stage, this is their craft, and they don't want it to be bootlegged by somebody, but at the same time, it's like being in the moment. Remember those jokes that had you bursting at the seams and hard to breathe. You are laughing. That's a good thing. Those are good moments to have. Those are the dopamine hits we should be getting versus the click dopamine hits.
I couldn't agree more with you. I enjoy interviewing so much for that connection because it eliminates this, honestly. It's just you and I in a room. My phone is on silent. I'm going to discard it if anybody calls me now because we are in the middle of it. It's like that uninterrupted thing that doesn't happen anywhere else. If you go to a noisy bar room or whatever and try to sit down and have it, you are not going to have it like this. We got plenty of booze here too, but to the point that I have started doing it, this is something that I will never publish.
What I was getting back to was I started doing it with my kids because there were no distractions. They come in here. They think it's cool to come in here. They listen to some podcasts because I'm in that space, and they listen to audiobooks and those sorts of things. They think it's cool to come in here but to sit down and have them for 30 minutes. Do you know who Tom Clum is? He runs Rocky Mountain Specialty Gear. He is the owner and operator. Him and his sons.
We've heard you talk about him.
A great guy. I can't wait to get Tom back in here. He’s an incredible archery coach. If you are ever looking for an archery lesson, he is the Marc Montoya, Loren Landow, or Trevor Wittman of archery, in my opinion. He's a stud.
I'm glad you brought that up. I want to hear what you are talking about still, but I want to go back to that.
Him and his sons run Rocky Mountain Specialty Gear. It’s an amazing and traditional archery shop. They have the biggest traditional bow inventory in the US. People shop from them online. You can walk in there, and there are hundreds of traditional bows. If you are looking to go to the traditional route like Aron Snyder, Tom Clum, or any of these traditional shooters, and Joel Turner is another one that's amazing, those guys have an unbelievable amount of bows with different draw lengths and weights. They will set you up, and they are so well-trained that you are going to spend your money right because they are going to fit you into something that works for you and spend time with you guys or with guys down there to get them set up properly.
That's their whole thing. It's an incredible shop, and then they have a whole compound side too. If you want that from there, you can get that as well. More importantly is the coaching and Tom in general. I don't know how long he's been in business. It's got to be close to 40 years or something. I have been going there for a long time since I was a young man.
My family shopped with them. They have known him for a long time. His sons were both wrestlers. One of them was a division one wrestler in college. They’re incredible athletes and elk hunters. You should see some of the bulls that they have taken down. We are talking traditionally, too, which is a whole other ballgame on top of archery.
It's one thing to reach out and touch an elk from 40 or 50 yards. To hunt traditionally, you got to be pretty damn close, or I would have to have accuracy and energy behind the arrow. I was hitting Tom up one day. I can't remember what we were doing. We might've been doing an adaptive shoot or something, and I said his boys are now men. They are probably my age. They might be in their late-30s or early-40s, some of them. I was like, “How did you keep your kids interested in archery and hunting all this time? It's something that I want my son to do. It's why I got back into bow hunting again.”
I have always shot a bow, and I have always enjoyed shooting my bow. It puts such a value on a life seeing something that big, knowing where your meal came from and that stuff, and an appreciation for life in general. That was one of the life lessons. I asked Tom. I was like, “How did you keep them interested?” He's like, “They are like a bird dog. You always make them leave before they want to.” In that philosophy, I have applied it in so many different things.
When we are out practicing football prior to the season starting or whatever because my son wants to be at a tight end or defensive end, I'm always like, “We got 30 minutes. You better work because we are leaving after that.” When we are in here, “We got 30 minutes. We only have 1 hour and 20 minutes. We got to go, but I promise I will bring you again.” That's always the thing. Never let them get bored with it. I have applied it in so much, but it’s a good little life hack for me anyways. My kids are always asking, “When are we going to go do this?”
It’s like, “I'm ready to go again.” I'm excited to go do this thing that I go, “Here we go again.”
That philosophy would maybe even work in adults. You deal with that. Let's dive into that a little bit. The last time you were in, we primarily stuck to professional athletes and some of the guys you've trained and some of the different methods you guys use. We'll break it down a little bit further this time. I will let you dive in wherever you want, but do you find that you got to treat some of your clients like bird dogs?
I never thought about it in that light, but thinking about it right now, yes. Something Loren always talked about with us was giving them what they wanted and giving them what they needed at the same time. If they are coming in looking for a specific goal, whether they are a gen pop client or it's a high school kid who's looking to gain more competence and confidence in the weight room, all the way up to your professional athletes to give them what they need but then shut it down. That's the nice thing. Looking at your point or Tom's point, I have 60 minutes maximum. Once we are done, we are done.
Give people what they want and give them what they need at the same time. If they’re coming in looking for a specific goal, whether they’re a gen pop, a client, or a high school kid looking to gain more confidence, give them what they need, then shut it down. Once you’re done, you’re done.
That's not to say that the 60 minutes hits, and then a buzzer goes off, and I don't care, and it's under the next person. No. It's that we have this much time to get this done, and then it's, “I will see it our next session, next day, this day, or that day.” If they are going to go out of town, I will see you next week, and I will say, “Okay. I will see you next Thursday, Friday, or whatever the case may be.”
To me, I want to create that loop of consistency and knowing that when they leave there, they get to anticipate what they are coming into the following session, week, or month that there is this bigger plan in play when it comes to their athletic development in whatever it is that we are trying to improve, exploit, or whatever the case may be.
We are not done, we are never done, or we are never going to be done because the goal, mindset, preparation, and what it is that we are aiming at changes. All these things are fluid at the end of the day. What can I do to create an environment where 1) They have fun? As long as they are having fun, there's a high likelihood that they are going to return. 2) Are they getting what they want? People come in with a specific goal or desire in mind.
I'm going to interrupt you here. We'll bring it right back to that. I didn't think about it. If people haven't read the first episode that you and I did, you're performance and strength and conditioning coach. If you want to dive into what you do on a day-to-day basis, so people know exactly what we are talking about.
I make monsters. I’m a sports performance coach, strength and conditioning coach, and personal trainer, depending on who you talk to. I am in the business of helping people improve in terms of different biomotor abilities athletically and then improving their athletic qualities overall to hand off a better product of an athlete to a sports-specific coach and say, “You have a more refined athlete in movement as a running back, shortstop, pitcher, volleyball player, mixed martial artist, or jiu-jitsu practitioner. I want to make a better athlete, so you have a more robust version of that to now instill and incorporate different methodologies and maybe advanced strategies for them in their position of their sport of choice.” That's what I do.
Not to mention that you do it at a very high level. How much of Landow’s clientele are professional athletes, whether they are playing in the NFL, NBA, MLB, UFC, or LFA? It goes on and on.
This might shock people. Our biggest volume of clientele is middle school and high school kids. In that age range, we see our biggest volume of clientele. We do work, and we are fortunate enough to work with guys that are MLB, NFL, or UFC. The list goes on and on, but what fills our space is a lot of kids. It's cool because it's fun to work around different guys that walk, and you are like, “That's so-and-so.”
I got a college baseball player. He was getting ready to work out, and I was having a conversation with two guys that are on the Colorado Rockies staff at the moment, and he was like, “Is that so-and-so?” I was like, “Yes. Come here. I will introduce you to these guys.” They are just regular guys. It's cool to see that because now he sees that, and he was like, “I'm working out at this place. I work out at this time. If this is where these guys train, and this is the level that I'm trying to get to, and this is what these guys are doing.”
I don't know if these kids are manifesting this stuff or if they are putting it on some vision board. It makes it more real and tangible like, “I shook so-and-so's hand, and I met this guy. I met that football player and this fighter.” It helps them to see that they are regular folks, and you can 100% focus your energy on trying to achieve something. I can't guarantee the kid that I'm working with is going to be a Major League baseball player. I can't guarantee that, but I am damn sure going to stack the deck in his favor.
I experienced that firsthand and through the show, which was super cool. I reached out to Marc Montoya to connect me with Derek Wolfe because I wanted to have him on. Shout-out. He’s an incredible guy. I hope you are doing all right out there. Marc. I knew he was a big bow hunter. I have been a fan of the Broncos forever. I know you are a Raiders fan.
We had Derek in here. He’s the salt of the earth. Great guy. I don't know if you know him. I have worked with him. He’s super genuine. I'm excited for his future outside of football because he's super passionate about it. I pulled my son out of school early because this was his first year playing full-contact football. He came to me and was like, “Dad, I want to play,” and it was something I was never going to force on him. I said, “Okay. Let's get you in shape. Now catch a football with all these pads on and with a helmet. Let's go practice.” I brought him out to a turf field in the middle of summer and made him wear a helmet, shoulder pads, and the whole niner. I was like, “Do you still want to play?” He still wanted to play.
He got hit first time pretty good in his first scrimmage, and he still wanted to play. I was like, “That's surprising to me because this is not an aggressive kid.” He was doing his thing enough to get by. He was a super athletic and smart kid and played a lot of chess. When it comes to strategy and that stuff and the playbook, he totally understands that.
He understands the clock, the downs, and the technical side of it, which is awesome, having Derek in here and Tyler was playing defensive end at the time. He's a huge Broncos fan, so I was like, “I'm going to pull him out of school early.” Derek took it a step further, went to lunch with us, and had him meet Derek Wolfe. At that moment, I swear to God, he was knocking people's heads off at practice. The coach was like, “What happened to you?”
He had seven sacks in practice. I was like, “What's going on?” I think it's that motivation of seeing somebody like that and even being around those guys. Being around Marc or some of these fighters like Dustin Jacoby that are in that good shape, when they walk out of here, I'm like, “I'm a piece of shit. I got to go to the gym. I got to up my game.”
They are people, and they have exceptional talent. Derek is one of those guys that’s a good dude to talk to. He's super easy to talk to. The man is a man, the salt of the earth. I love having conversations with that guy, and Marc is the same way. Extremely high work ethic. Anything that they do, it's almost an excess on purpose.
Not to a detriment, but finding that next half step to be above where they were. I hate to put it in this context, but not settling for being mediocre. There are plenty of guys that are in the league right now. There are plenty of fighters in the UFC right now. I don't know every single player in the NFL, MLB, or UFC. I don't, but we all know who the guys and the gals are who are exceptional at what they do. They are the 1% of the 1% for a reason. When you get to meet someone like Derek Wolfe, it rocks you a little bit because it's inspiring to see that person in real life, and he is larger than life in person. It makes you want to be better.
For me, I know it does. I have been fortunate to work with Derek a little bit. There's something about those types of people, and I love being surrounded by those types of people. I will push and push, but then there's always something a little bit extra that you can find, and those people pull it out of you simply sometimes by being there.
You can push and push and push, but there’s something a little extra you can find, and some people will pull it out of you simply sometimes by just being there.
Where they find that or where I find it is in those uncomfortable moments. There are some of the learning lessons I have had here, like podcasting. Having a two-star general to come in here to talk to us that was strictly through Black Rifle, they were like, “I want you to have this guy on,” and I was like, “Okay.”
I did a little bit of homework on him, and I'm like, “How am I going to say no to this?” Having him come in, I was like, “What am I going to talk to this guy about?” I'm an ex-rock and roll roadie, and he was a two-star general and ran like the 160th Sword and all this crazy military stuff and special operations, but it turned out to be awesome. It was a great episode. Jeremy even got into it. We got into UFOs. We asked all the stupid questions that two roadies would want to know from a two-star general, and he had the best time. We still keep up with him to this day.
Talk about a moment of being nervous. I'm not sleeping a couple of nights before. This could make or break us. Not that it would. Even if it went bad, I'm sure we'd still be doing this, but it was one of those moments. As I was learning it, I was like, “If I can talk to him, somebody that's been involved in Mogadishu like the Black Hawk Down thing, and Osama bin Laden raid, in between all that and everything that happened, this guy was heavily involved with it from a special operations standpoint.”
In those moments, it’s almost like you got to push through that. Whenever I'm having one of those moments when I'm like, “Derek is coming in. I hope this goes good,” I think back to that, and then I'm like, “Now I can be relaxed at the moment,” because nothing was that nerve-wracking about it once you sat down.
Anticipation is a mother in it. It’s getting in your head, and you create these outcomes, dialogues, and interactions that don't even happen and will never happen. Then you have these moments, and you are like, “That was so cool.” I have had a few of those. It's funny because you bring up the two-star general. I have a guy who's a retired Air Force colonel. Me being prior military, I was like, “How do I need to be around this guy?” I built him up, and now I'm barking at him and telling him what to do. It's how it's supposed to be, officer types. Talking to him, I have some of the best conversations when he comes into the gym. I literally look forward to covering different topics and getting his take on certain things and what his thought would be based on his prior service and where he is now in the civilian sector. It's cool.
There's a reason why those guys were in those positions. It's not because they were not smart. I will tell you that. Those are incredible people to have a conversation with.
It all comes from having that relaxed conversation, posing a question, and then sitting back and listening. It’s about taking it in and listening, which is what this whole setup is about. I love listening to podcasts. My wife is so sick and tired of me saying, “I was listening to this show.” She's like, “That's all you do.”
My wife has said to me, “Don't podcast me.” I'm like, “Damn it. Now it's biting me in the ass.”
Look at the interactions and the people and the connection.
She doesn't mean it.
No, that's what they do.
Back to what you do, we were talking about people coming to you with a goal, and then you are helping them achieve that through strength, conditioning, and mobility. There are many different facets. If we could dive in or do a deep dive, how do you assess somebody who comes to you with a specific goal in mind?
I ask a lot of questions. I have learned that that's where it starts. People will come in, and I will get a phone call or an email, “Here's my makeup. Here's what I'm looking to achieve. Here's what I can do. Here's where I'm at.” I want to know way more like, “Why did you get into this sport? What drives you in the weight room? How much experience do you have? Have you ever worked with a coach? What's your current injury state? Where are you in terms of competitive play?” For high school kids, is it high school season? Is it club season? Are we in-season, out-of-season, pre-season, or post-season?
When it comes to fighters, do we know when our next fight is going to be? Do we have something on the books? If so, how far out? We both know that sometimes these guys get called at a moment's notice. You talked about Dustin Jacoby earlier. Here's a guy who was up on the side of a mountain. No pun intended, but he's literally on a mountain and gets a phone call, “We got a short notice fight. Do you want to take it?”
He hangs up. He's walking down, getting in his truck, driving to make weight, get to the airport, and go to the venue. These guys have to be ready literally at a moment's notice. What is it that we are looking at? What is it that we are aiming at? I want to ask a ton of questions on the front side so I can narrow down exactly where we need to be relative to that whole timeline of events.
From there, it's back engineering, “What do we need to work on the most? What are our big rocks? What big buckets do we need to fill?” I utilize an assessment tool that I use with every single athlete every single day, and that's our dynamic warmup. The bread and butter of what we do in terms of evaluation and processes that we utilize at Landow Performance is, “How does somebody look? How do they move? What's their mood? What are their stress levels? What's their energy like? What was their sleep like?” This is all watching them move with intent and specificity of purpose and then having conversations in between. That way, they are not so bogged down in all the minutia and the small steps.
There are expectations that I need to have, and if I see something that's a little off, I will remind them and cue them because, at the end of the day, that's still my job, to be tactile and be a coach, but I want to get as much information as possible. From there, I have a battle plan in terms of, “Here's what I want to work on now. Does my warmup set the stage for what I need to do? Do we need to call an audible? What do we need to do? Do we need to work on strength, power, speed, or change of direction? Do we need to work on decelerated patterns? Do we need to work on general athletic qualities?” This may sound silly to some people reading this, something as simple as a skip. For some people, it's hard. Some people pick it up right away. Some people move. It's like running.
When I was a kid, if you wanted to be fast, you ran harder. The byproduct was you were faster. No. There is biomechanics and a breakdown of this whole thing to where your body position and weight distribution to where you strike the ground, what your arm action does, your torso position, head position, and even the direction that your eyes are looking are all these factors that make up how fast or how slow you are moving at that moment. It's cool to sit down and break these things down for people and to help educate them that these simple fundamental things pay huge dividends. The return on investment in simplicity in a weight room is huge, but it’s tough because I'm up against the social media machine.
There are so many people on social media with advice on workouts. If you are a person taking it in and you know nothing, how do you filter some of the stuff you see? There's some bad information out there.
There's some good and some bad information. I don't want to throw anybody under the bus, but let's say I saw a video of a strength and conditioning coach working with a mixed martial artist. This is not a person in Colorado and nobody that I have ever worked with. The strength coach had this person doing a hang clean while this person was standing on a BOSU ball, and the BOSU ball was upside down. For people that don't know what a BOSU ball is, it's a half globe that's a very soft surface. If you flip it over, that softer surface is on the ground, and now you are standing on a harder surface, but you are trying to catch your balance.
You might as well be on a skateboard, but even worse than that because it's one point of balance contact. It's jelly. There's nothing hard about that.
It’s constantly moving, so trying to achieve balance isn't going to happen. You are going to hopefully not eat shit. I get. It was lightweight, but that's not the point. I, as a performance coach, look at that going, “What year are we in? How are we still doing this stuff? How are we promoting this stuff on social media?” Somebody or a lot of people are going to see this and go, “That looks cool.” As it looks cool, that must translate to someone's success in their athletic endeavors or in their weight room endeavors, and that's not necessarily the case. I'm not trying to bash this particular person, but this exercise selection was dangerous. I'm staring at it like, “What the hell are we doing now?”
What if he fell? That could be a career-ender injury. It could happen.
That's called the lawsuit. That leads to this other piece, which is trust. As a performance or strength and conditioning coach, the more we spend time together, the more people trust me and reciprocally, the more I trust them as well. We build this rapport, and they are putting their well-being in my hands. There's an inherent danger in coming into a gym. I don't want to make that sound like a scary thing, but these are heavy metal weights that you could trip over, not paying attention, walk backward, and you are tripping and falling over a bench.
You could get hurt walking by somebody and then having a plate fall off their whatever.
We try to mitigate all these risks within the gym. The whole purpose is to be a better version of whatever you are at right now. Whether that's gain weight, losing weight, being faster, being stronger, being more powerful, being more agile, improving your range of motion, or improving your capabilities in whatever sport you are involved in or multiple sports, whatever the case may be, people want to be better athletes. My job as a performance coach and our job as an industry should be to help them achieve these goals by scientific means and methods and building relationships, and then using the Xs and Os to make those things converge into the perfect storm of here's the better product now.
Strength And Conditioning: People want to be better athletes. Our job as an industry should be to help them achieve these goals by scientific means and methods and building relationships, and then use them to make those things converge into the perfect storm of “here’s the better product now.”
I like to do that by looking back at programs or giving people a timeline and like, “Do you remember where you were 3 or 6 months ago? Do you remember the first time you walked in the door, and I asked you to give me a bodyweight squat? Now you are putting weight on your back, in your hands, or whatever the case may be.”
Look at the strides that we are making. Look at the direction that we are going. It's a trajectory and a process that we are trying to get. Not to bag on these devices too much, but the instant gratification piece we get from being able to look up anything on these microcomputers that make phone calls is right there at our fingertips. We get these dopamine hits, but then when we look at the gym, we are still an organism and we are trying to adapt to stress, and that adaptation is a process. I know it sounds super cliché, and everyone's talking about, “Enjoy the process. Fall in love with the process.” Those people are right, and it's a cliché for a reason because it's true. You have to fall in love with it, and you have to be okay with the uncomfortable components of that.
If I'm being brutally honest, it's going to fucking suck, but guess what? The goal that lives on the other side of that giant heap of uncomfortable is worth it. The question is, are you willing to step one foot in front of the other and put yourself in that uncomfortable position to have earned the right to achieve that goal on the other side? By the way, that piece of gold is a tiny flake.
It can go away. It can be taken from you, but on that path, it's more difficult. Over time, you are going to sit there, and you are going to keep putting in these pieces. Over time, now you have this wealth of capability, capacity, ability, or whatever you want to call it to be able to do these things. To me, the evolution of performance training is you watch these athletes go from college kids to whatever professional level that puts them in later on in life. Then you get a guy like Derek Wolfe, who is retired from the NFL. That guy is not slowing down, and thank God, why should he? Keep going.
Look at Marc Montoya. For anybody who doesn't know, Marc Montoya is the head coach of Factory X. I love this guy. He's been coming into the gym. We talk about this on occasion. It's been quite some time now. This guy does not miss. He's not there observing his fighters do strength and conditioning. He is right there in the weeds with him. A lot of times, it's a catalyst for that improved performance because, “I’m doing this. I did this much weight. I did this much velocity or power output,” and it drives people to get better.
That's a whole leading by example. Those guys and me included, he's been a huge mentor to me and a mindset mentor since I have known him. He’s been so gracious with me with his time. He’s an incredible person to be around and to call a friend.
He's infectious.
He is. Every one of his guys would follow him right off of a cliff, including me, if it came down to it. If Marc called me right now and said, “I need something.” I'd be like, “Eric, I got to go,” and you would do the same thing.
There's a small list of people I would do that for, and he's on that list. I'm going to come back in a little bit. I am so fortunate to be surrounded by some absolute monsters, different coaches, athletes, philosophies, and mentalities. I get mentorship from people who don't even know I'm pulling mentorship from them. I do it from a distance. I sit back, watch, observe, learn, and try to take things in. I’m very fortunate to be able to do that. Some of these people I can reach out and text him right now. That's crazy. I think about that sometimes, and I'm like, “This shouldn't be a thing. How is this a thing?”
To that point and to that end about guys like Marc Montoya, he's a guy that when you are in a room with him, no matter what you are doing, whatever you have in that gas tank, you are going to find a little bit more. If you can't, you are going to hear about it, but that's a good thing. These people shouldn't have thin skin, especially in the fight community, and then I'm getting off on a whole different tangent.
It’s the idea of making something uncomfortable but then finding fun in it. That's something that Anthony Smith and Marc talk about that these guys will joke about all day long in the weight room. The whole team does it now. They crack jokes, make fun of each other, and poke fun. One of Marc’s jokes, he's like, “With gas prices going up, why do I make this drive? This is so easy.” He's busting my balls a little bit.
When it's all said and done, he'll walk out and be like, “That was hard.” You have to find those moments of pleasure within the pain, suck, and uncomfortable. It's gotten to a point where I have started telling people that you don't have to fall in love with the process, but you have to make friends with that uncomfortable component. If you are not willing to do that, then this process is going to be awful, and you are going to go in the exact opposite direction of where you want to go.
Humans are strange, myself included. I have to have something to keep me interested. I need to have a purpose. The only reason I'm going to go to the weight room, go run, put on 80 pounds and walk through the forest is because I have one thing in mind, September, elk hunting. That's what I'm doing it for.
Also, at the same time, even when it comes to dietary stuff that I have done, it's holding myself accountable. Making a public announcement on here or telling my friends. I don't want to let them down. It's strange to me that I can't do this on my own. For me, I have to put these stipulations in place to publicly announce or call a friend and say, “This is what I'm trying to do. Do you have any suggestions?”
That's a good thing. There's accountability on a couple of different levels. You can be accountable to yourself, or you can help hold somebody accountable. If anyone's going to call somebody else, and let's say I'm going to reach out and call you like, “Here's my goal, and I'm going to put this out, and I'm going to put this in front of you right now. I have a date or an idea about where I want to be with this specific endeavor,” whatever that is. Now, you are probably going to make a note on your phone or jot it down on a calendar, or you are going to check in with me every so often, “How's it going?” Now I put it out to you, and the last thing that I want to do is let you down.
People don't understand, but sometimes when they do that, you have to look at that self-accountability component as well. What if you had nobody to tell? What if you wanted nobody to tell? Every morning, every night, hopefully, you are getting those opportunities to look yourself dead square in the face in the mirror and ask yourself, “Did you get it done? Did you not?” When you have somebody there, it does make it a little bit easier, but that mirror does not lie. To me, it couldn't be any clear.
The only thing that can make you feel good about it is genuinely achieving that without cheating in any way because it's super easy to cheat on anything, like diet, relationships, cutting corners at the gym, or whatever it is. Back to that Instagram thing, people are trying to find in these crazy workouts where they have this new way to do pushups or a new way to do simple things that require body movement.
I have taken some of this or who made me realize some of this, and not the best mentor for what I want to achieve, but an incredible human is Mike Van Wyck. He’s a former bodybuilder and social influencer and has a YouTube channel. He was in the Olympia Bodybuilder at one point. Now he's covered in tattoos. I look at him, and I'm like, “I would look like that.” He looks like he's straight out of the Hells Angels or something.
It would be cool to look like that. He's yoked, but his whole philosophy is people are getting fucking bored with the same old, same old. The same old, same old, unfortunately, with good technique is what works. He's like, “Why are you doing curls and holding one static? If you are looking to build muscle in the mechanics behind it, you have to expand and contract the muscle, like sitting there holding one dumbbell while you are curling. The other one might make you stronger, but it's not going to make your arms any bigger.” He's looking at it from a bodybuilding standpoint, not a strength standpoint.
He's not wrong. The reason why I'm interrupting and saying that is because when we look at sports performance specifically, we are looking at bodybuilding, powerlifting, and weightlifting. From those three and it expands further, but when we are talking about it in the weight room, look at what bodybuilders have been able to achieve. It's insane. Look at powerlifters and the weights that these guys can move.
Let's make a caveat to that too. With drugs or without drugs, because it's both, but you still have to put in the time.
I get it. It gets broken down into subcategories, but look at what they have been able to achieve. Now you look at Olympic weightlifting. The sport of weightlifting itself. Look at what these people can accomplish.
Even cross-fitters, that shit blows my mind sometimes. I'm like, “I'd hurt myself.” I know I would. I have tried some of that shit. I can't move the next day.
I did it back in the day when I was in college because it was brand-new to me, and I was like a knucklehead younger guy going, “That's a lot of reps.” I'm going to do it because of glitches, it looks hard, and I did it for my ego. One day I was on campus, I'm doing 50 box jumps. I'm halfway in going, “What am I doing? Why this?”
I get it. I used to knock CrossFit. I don't knock it these days. The reason why I say that is because if you are a competitor in CrossFit, do you know what you are going to have to do? CrossFit. That's going to get you better at competing in CrossFit. Going out and running marathons aren't going to help you. You have to be specific in what your endeavor is because without that specificity, what are you ultimately training for?
You have to be specific in your endeavor because without that specificity, what are you ultimately training for?
The sport has evolved. You are seeing more people like Josh Bridges and these guys that have an incredible technique in it. He's only 5’6’’ or something and just an animal. Lifting crazy amounts of weight, pushing crazy sleds, and doing all kinds of different stuff. We have had Hunter McIntyre in here, another savage. Those guys that play in that world feels like when you first started watching the sport, it was like the first time that the UFC. The first UFC is tough.
There was a barroom brawl from all different facets. You had a 165-pound guy fighting a sumo wrestler. You had a guy with one boxing glove, and the other guy was Tank Abbott or whatever it was. It was like something out of Mad Max almost. You couldn't even get that in a barroom brawl. That was so entertaining. To this day, it's gotten progressively, but look at where it's at now. I feel like CrossFit has done that a little bit too. There's a lot more technique that's behind it now. It's not as rude and crude as it was when it first started.
It seems like it's gotten more refined over time, and it depends on who you talk to. It depends on the lifter and the coach. I could say the same thing about strength and conditioning and personal training. Just because there's a strength and conditioning coach doesn't mean that they are at the pinnacle of their career. It's a label or a title. How good are you? What separates you from other coaches? If you are a competitive lifter, what separates you from other lifters, fighters, football players, baseball players, volleyball players, field hockey, lacrosse, or track and field? The list goes on and on. If you can improve and refine what it is that you are doing, how can I knock that?
It's so true. We touched on this the last time. How I found you guys and Loren specifically, I was watching something on improving running speed, like a 40-yard dash for football. There was a video or something that I stumbled across, and it was Loren breaking it down from the starting box. They hadn't even started running. Foot position, toe pressure, hand placement, head position, reaction time, or the start, and they hadn't even gotten off the blocks. All that difference he was saying was whether it could get you an NFL contract or not.
The long and short of it is yes because you look at the NFL combine and Pro Day preparation that coach Aggie just started. These guys are coming in, and they are fast, and they move well for their position. They are about to learn the nuts and bolts and all the tiny nuances of something as simple as, “Do me a favor.” When you place your hand down and go to shift your weight, I need your hips a little higher, or I need your hips a little lower. It's not the same for everybody because everybody's built differently. Their limb length is different.
Their reach is going to be different. Their torso length is going to be different. Depending upon how they get set up in position, what may work for me and my stature might not work for a guy of your stature. It might have to be tweaked a little bit, but the goal is to find the most efficient position from which to start so we can produce the most force and less time and be efficient in every part of every step as efficient as we possibly can relative to that event or that day. Isn't the goal to sit there and be more refined over time?
Perfect your craft.
One hundred percent. It's the reps but the intent behind the reps. In ‘22, I spent the most time talking about intent with my athletes. “Are you doing this with purpose, or are we checking a box? If we are checking a box, you are in the wrong place with the wrong coach.” I can't do that, and I can't get down on that philosophy. Everything we do has to have intent behind this, and what is the intent? The intent is to improve these qualities so we can bridge this and use this to springboard into the next piece. I have shot a bow a handful of times, but the number of times I have seen guys on social media just drawn in their backyard.
Just the reps on reps. I'm like, “This is what I love to see.” Other people will swipe past it or scroll or whatever. “He's shooting from 10 to 15 yards. A big whoop.” I'm like, “No, that's a big deal,” because it's the setup, execution, thought process, intent, and purpose of making that rep as efficient and as effective as possible.
You are spot on with that because without that, you will lose it and progressively get worse, or I do anyways. There are guys that can pick up a bow and nail a twelve-ring. I'm sure. There are guys that I know firsthand, like, “I don't pick up my bow until September 2nd or August 28th,” and archery season starts at the beginning of September.
I find it hard to believe that they, at the moment, can have an accurate shot. There are all kinds of different stuff. To take it even a step further, like some of the coachings that I have gotten from Tom Clum when it comes to that and the repetition in the way I release is a pressure release. You are not like pulling a trigger because your body's going to anticipate a jump and all this stuff.
It then turned into where it's almost like a martial art going into it. You have to be in the right mental state. Your positioning needs to be right. You need to be aware of your body positioning to see whether your elbows are down too far or it needs to come up a little bit. Now I need to squeeze my shoulder blades, and the thumb is not moving. It's simply on there, and it's a pressure intention. In that, I learned that I have to have a mantra, which is crazy. I have a whole shot sequence that I go through in my head where it's like it's about 7 or 8 words consecutively put together, and that's my shot sequence.
To relearn that from being a guy that pulled the trigger, and that was me going to Tom saying, “I want to be as accurate as Levi Morgan. I want to be as accurate as some of these guys that practice this philosophy, Joel Turner.” He's like, “You are relearning something,” and it was hard. At the moment when there's a huge bull elk standing in front of you, and it's screaming, that adrenaline is going on, and you are trying to figure out or time the movement.
Maybe you are out of breath from chasing the thing up a hill. Maybe you've been sitting in the same spot for half an hour, and there's no blood in your legs, so you go to stand up. With that sequence, everything is still the same. I'm not feeling anything. I'm going through the shot sequence. Part of that is taking a breath. Taking a second to be more accurate.
There's a ton that you can put into it. You can put as much into it as you want, but it comes down to this, even though I have that mantra, if I don't do that on a daily or a weekly basis at the bare minimum. On a weekly basis, I'm talking half the week. Half the days of the week. When I go to shoot the next time, I will be pissed at myself.
A lot of it is a motor skill too. It's your body knowing where it's at and having those repetitions to know that, “My elbow is not in the right position.” The shitty part is you got to figure out when it's going wrong, “What the hell am I doing wrong?” You are talking a matter of a couple of inches, a flinch, a muscle tweak, maybe your back is not straight, or whatever it is.
That's when you get to do the cool stuff, and my opinion is you get to peel back the onion a little bit further. Now we are slicing super thin. In everything you talked about while you are talking about your setup and seeing you get into that position, I can tell that you are walking through those steps. You are not just doing this. You are literally thinking about how your shoulder blade comes back, where your elbow position is, where the direction of your head is, and where your elbows are positioned internally rotated or externally rotated at the shoulder.
Those are the pieces that people want to skip over to get to the cool part, and they are not willing to put in that work, some people. Some people are, and I applaud the people that do. I hope the ones that are trying to rush the process can take a breath, relax, and get back into that process because what it will yield at the end of it if you stick with it is very rewarding. When you look at motor control, it’s maybe something like that.
There are pieces that people want to skip over to get to the cool part. They’re not willing to put in that work. Those trying to rush the process should take a breath, relax, and get back into it because what it will yield if you stick with it is very rewarding.
It's like body awareness, like knowing where your body is at.
It’s going through all of those steps. You had a process you had learned, and that's what you adapted to.
There's a reason why there's an archery target next door.
That's what you learned. Right, wrong, or indifferent. Then you had different coaching, and you had to relearn something. Now you have to rewind and back engineer all of those components you've had in the past that you thought was the best-case scenario, and you are like, “There's a better way to do this.” That's cool.
When we look at the human body, that's a neural adaptation. Going back to the specificity with intent, the more that you do that on purpose to be better or more refined, what you are doing is laying down insulation on that neural pathway. The more insulated that neural pathway becomes to all of those tissues that are involved in the timing sequence of it, it's like going from dial-up to broadband. It's like going from one end of the spectrum to the other.
You get better. It's a refined technique. On the flip side, if that's not something you are doing, then that motor pathway isn't being activated and utilized, so it doesn't need to be insulated as much. We don't need to connect and communicate with those tissues to do the same job. Now we start to lose it. You have to be consistent in your approach to what you are doing, and that can also be a thing more for coaches and in watching people perform and get better.
I sometimes know for myself personally, watching somebody in the weight room or moving and having to go through these fundamental processes and these steps, that we would sometimes consider remedial steps. These are important. They have to have this. Sometimes we want to jump ahead. Even as a coach, I want to go.
I see it day in and day out. The person in front of me might have it for 1 to 2 hours a week. That's not a lot of dosing time when it comes to strength, conditioning, and sports performance. If they can take that, the job is to transfer it from what we are doing onto the basketball court, tennis court, football field, lacrosse field, or mat. Wherever it is, we have to start implementing that so we can get that use over and over to lay down that insulation.
Now we have this circuitry that is super high speed. If you can do that at high speed in terms of communication from the central nervous system to the tissues, you can do it in a slightly relaxed position. Not be super tense, and everything is 100%. That little bit of relaxation, not only could you potentially move better, you could do it over and over because you are not sapping your gas tank by biting down on every single thing.
Hunting is that 100%. Shooting a rifle or not, there is an adrenaline dump. You want to talk about a dopamine hit and scared. There are so many thoughts that go through your mind when you are drawing on an animal. Even for 2023, for example, it was like getting down to the last couple of days. I had a doe tag I was going to fill. I was comfortable shooting my bow and 100% comfortable with my shot process, sequence, and mantra. I drew on this doe like there was a buck with her. A beautiful buck. I wish I had caught him in the regular season. There was a buck with a doe, and they were in a rut. Literally, I could have walked up and probably grabbed this buck by the antlers.
I stood around, snuck around, and spotted and stalked this thing for 30 to 45 minutes, and I didn't need to be as careful as I was being. I found out. I drew on this doe three times, went through my mantra, and didn't execute it. It was like a part of it was being in the moment. In hindsight, I wish I would have, but it was like it almost felt too easy or something. At that moment, I didn't have that huge adrenaline dump like I normally do with an elk. You can spend days in a national forest or the backcountry, even if it's on private land if you are elk hunting and not even see an elk.
The moment that you do, you're like, “I haven't drawn my bow in seven days.” You start doubting yourself. There's all this shit, and that's one thing that shot sequence takes out of it. Part of that mantra for me is it relaxes me. It puts me back down into a calm state. It repurposes all that adrenaline.
One part of my mantra, first is that you knock an arrow, draw your bow, and level your bubble. I'm trying to think because I'm so used to saying it mentally. Take a breath. You don't want to take a huge breath. That helps your shoulder blades relax, and then it's to raise your elbow, honor the hunt, and kill. That simple thing. Those 8 or 9 words will calm my nervous system 100% to where I can focus on being accurate, and that's what Tom taught me.
I get it. I wish I could apply that more in life. To take it even a step further and a little bit deeper, going through that on a daily basis makes me happy. That's my meditation. I get why people sit on a pillow, close their eyes, and have some mantra, like Jiří Procházka. He's the new guy that stumbled in 205 light heavyweights and is like a true martial artist.
He reads The Book of Five Rings. He has spent days in a dark room, to the point where his hair is even done like a samurai’s. Some of his knockouts, he's crazy to watch. It’s not your typical fighter who fights with his hands down like a traditional martial artist. It's wild that somebody like that can come in that's unorthodox. That was his plan the whole time was to come in and take the belt. Now he's injured or something, so I don't think he's got it. It's a vacant title. I don’t know where he’s at.
No. He still has it. Glover Teixeira and Jamahal Hill are going to fight for an interim belt. Based on that outcome, we'll see who fights Jiří in the future. He's sidelined with an injury. I don't know the extent of the injury.
Back to what I was saying, I can get why you could get stuck in that mindset because, with archery, I will never go back now.
Look at how calm and comfortable that puts you in, not just your mental state, but your physical state.
What I'm saying is it's good for me outside of archery as well.
Yeah. That clears the noise. There's something about that and preparing for what it is that you are trying to do, but clearing the noise. Once you go, you just got to go.
I wish I could apply that in more spots in my life, like when I'm in the gym. I always feel like I'm in a hurry when I'm in the gym.
Why?
Time constraints like I got to pick up the kids. My time.
Just maximize your time.
Right. That's another great point that I did pick up from Mike Van Wyck. He popped up on my feed. One of those advertisements I don't like. He was one of the guys that I did follow, but he was like, “What's with you guys in the gym? You guys spend hours in the gym. That's not where you gain muscle. No gain muscle outside the gym. Work while you are here. The longer you have to recover, the more muscle you are going to build. That's where you build the muscle.”
It goes back to that stimulus. In exercise science, we have a guiding principle or philosophy that is the said principle. We talked about this last time. It's the specific adaptation to the imposed demand. In short, what you train for, you get. What you do is the result that you yield. If you are in the wrong position for sprinting or set up on a squatter of a deadlift, it is not great, but that's what you consistently do, then that's what the body's going to adapt to.
In exercise science, there’s a guiding principle or philosophy called the SAID principle. It’s the Specific Adaptation to the Imposed Demand. In short, what you train for, you get.
If you take the time to be purposeful and mindful of what you are doing, everything starts to come together. Let's say you only have 30 minutes to be in the gym. Maximize your time. I didn't say that you get on the bike for 30 minutes and sprint your freaking face off and go nuts. No. Maximize whatever it is that your plan is to be in there for that day, and when you are done, you are done.
Be done, be out, and go on to the next thing rather than being in the gym for 90 minutes, 2 hours, 2 hours and 30 minutes, or 3 hours. Your workout doesn't have to be that long. Give yourself some parameters. “I need to be done by this time. Here are exercises that I want to get done.” The one thing people could do across the board is monitor their rest time. If that's a wristwatch or a clock on the wall, or if you want to use your cell phone for the actual stopwatch on there, perfect. Try not to get on social media and scroll your life away, and then the next thing you know, you look at your watch and like, “I haven’t done a set for 7, 8, 9, or 10 minutes.”
For two hours, talk to your buddies on your phone, taking up a piece of equipment while you are on your phone. I don't know how many times I have been in the gym that I go to. Luckily, I have a home gym too, so I could easily go there, but sometimes it's more convenient if I'm in Denver or whatever. I have an Anytime Fitness membership. I don't know how many times I have seen the guys in between reps sitting on a bench on their phones. If you've ever been in any time fitness, there are not nine benches lined up. There's one.
Nice. Maximize your time. Why are you there? Do what you need to do, and then get out of there.
That's the real benefit of having some coaching. You don't want to waste your time because you are spending extra money, and the coach doesn't want to waste his time because he's trying to make you better or achieve what you want to achieve. It's that whole going back to having somebody hold you accountable.
It helps. Once you start to realize and feel the benefits of training, you are like, “There's something to this.” That's like you start to get a little bit more excited. You have these small victories. You build a little bit of confidence, and what is a little bit of confidence add? The desire to achieve more confidence, to hit more benchmarks, or to improve this and that, to hit a PR. Hit a PR in something, and then freaking 30 seconds sets you go, “Now I have a new PR.” That's not being satisfied. Being excited, pat yourself on the back, but it's a moment. It’s motivational, but it's fleeting. What can we do to put ourselves in a position to go, “I achieved this. What's next?” It doesn't have to be this ridiculous idea of what an achievement needs to be. These small victories. It's literally one step at a time, folks.
Having a goal beyond a goal, that's been hard for me in the past. The best analogy I can put it to that I have heard it from, and I don't know because I have never been a black belt at jiu-jitsu. A lot of guys get to that point, and then they are like, “I'm done.” They don't put in the amount of time they did to get that, right?
No. They have achieved something, and now that they have got there, they didn't look past it, and now they are sitting there wondering, “What do I do now?” Continue to train. To continue to improve and evolve. Try different things. Put yourself out there. Go roll with other black belts. Travel. Get different philosophies and ideas. Why do you need to be done?
We look at sports and competition. There's a podium, trophy, medal, or something involved to mark the end of something. When do you ever win in the weight room? I don't know of anybody that's like, “I beat the weight room. I'm out of here.” It's not a track and field event. You didn't win the 100-meter dash, and now you are done. You can retire, and you are not doing that anymore. It's a gym. You have to evolve with whatever your goals need to be. Once you achieve it, micro goals. Achieve it and then establish the next one, and then the next one. Do something that will impress yourself. Surprise yourself. Find out what you got. See what your medal is and test yourself.
Living in the moment too. Bringing it back to the very beginning of what we started talking about is knowing that you could do something in the moment of distress, like save somebody else's life. Maybe you could get over a wall to save somebody else's life. That's the type of stuff that motivates me, especially being a father. You want to be a good example for your kids too.
They are watching, observing, and they are soaking up what you do. People might get turned off by what I'm about to say, but I look at things in the same light like if shit were to hit the fan, am I physically and mentally prepared to handle something that is going to be a difficult physical task. I may not be inoculated with that specific stress enough, and adrenaline may come into play in all these different factors. Have I done enough to where if I need to evade something, what do I say? It hurts to run. Now, you can't get out of a scenario.
Are you going to lose your life for not being able to run 1 mile?
That's what I'm saying. I went from different specific athletic endeavors when I was younger to now, I look at it in a completely different light. Things make a lot more sense to me when I look at guys and gals that are transitioning from sport into, “What do I do with the rest of my life?” You get one vehicle. However many dents, dings, tire rotations, and whatever analogies you want to throw in there that you've done, you get one vehicle. What do you get to do with this vehicle, and how sustainable and how long-lasting is it? We talked about it earlier. Once you hit 40, you are like, “If I make it to 80, I'm halfway done. What do I do now?” Answer the question.
The biggest realization thing for me was heart disease runs in my family. I know my body's going to deteriorate. It's not going to get better, faster, and younger without doing some crazy new nuanced science or whatever. Maybe someday, but I highly doubt it. History is proof that you are only going to get slower and less mobile.
What do we do to combat that? What type of stressors can we incur of our own volition to improve our quality of life?
Anger is a huge one. People that are angry all the time look older.
Now, I felt that.
No, but you are a pretty happy guy.
I have my moments.
I have my moments too, but that's a huge factor of genuinely trying to be happy or do things that make you happy. Taking care of yourself. It's so hard because if you are a man and you have a family, you get caught up in an, “I got to provide this. I got to do this,” and then you have a job on top of that. You got to pay bills. Now you have to show up and work on time. Maybe it's at a cubicle.
I have been super fortunate that I have never had a career that was like that. I have always had these oddball careers that I enjoyed. I enjoyed going to work. I still do. I enjoy doing this. I think that you can get caught and be in debt. Everybody does. I think that that's the system. It's almost like a trap they have set up for people.
It can be. Did you guys ever watch that movie Zombieland?
I don't think I have seen it. Maybe I have. Is that the one with Brad Pitt?
No. It’s an awesome movie.
It's the cardio, right?
It's the cardio part. Staying limber and ensuring your cardio is there because they have zombies chasing them down. They make fun of this stuff, but this is real. When you start to slow down, and that stuff creeps up, and you can't run anymore, you can't outpace that thing or quit. Your body breaks down, and then that thing catches up to you and devours you. It's a real thing. It's going to happen. It's probably going to happen quite a few times, but then how do you reprioritize what is important to you as an end? Finding the means to attach meaning to that to be able to chase that down.
When you start to slow down, and stuff creeps up, you can’t run anymore. You can’t outpace that thing, or you quit. Your body breaks down, and then that thing catches up to you.
We get one vehicle. We get so many laps around the sun. We all have an expiration date, and we don't know when that's going to be, but how good are we taking care of this system that we have? That is a phenomenal system. Humans can do some incredible things, and how do we know where that limit is at? Sometimes we push it too hard, tweak something, or get an injury or something like that.
On the opposite side, if we do nothing or don't do enough of something, it's a losing end at both ends of that spectrum. How do we find progress, success, and small victories that turn into bigger victories that can hopefully sustain us through an athletic career, however long that may be? Not everybody gets to go to the NFL, NBA, or whatever that pinnacle may be. That's why pyramids are small at the top. Not everybody gets to go, and that's okay because it's not for everybody, but we all do this thing called life.
Whatever your goals are right now, once you achieve that, what is the next goal? I hear it sometimes from gen pop folks. “I don't have an athletic event coming up. I don't have this coming down. I don't have that coming up.” We have seasons. Are you going anywhere this summer? Is there a beach or a pool involved? You do have goals. You have a mirror or a scale. You have different conditions that maybe your family was predisposed to. How do we combat these things?
There's a way to do it, but it takes work and effort. It takes trial and error. It takes being uncomfortable, sweating, and having a high heart rate. Picking up something or moving something going, “I can't believe I did that.” I didn't think that I could. Now that you know that you can, what's next? How else can you surprise yourself? It doesn't have to be, “I PRed my back squat, and how do I PR my back squat again and again?”
Move something. Push a heavier sled. Go a little bit further. Get more vertical feet on a VersaClimber. Row 500 or 1,000 more meters. Not for the sake of beating a specific time or anything like that. Just impress yourself. Show yourself that you have a little bit more in the tank to give. I get it. There are ebbs and flows.
Knowing what you can be capable of because you are testing yourself at that point.
You are. If you do the same thing over time and are too consistent with something, we go from stimulation. We have stimulation, accumulation, and adaptation. Here's a stimulus. I need to have enough of that stimulus to have a positive adaptation or a beneficial effect. If I don't have enough of that stimulus, I don't get the effect I'm looking for.
Conversely, if I have too much of that stimulus, this fantastic organism and system will then auto-regulate. I know what my output needs to be. I know the energy cost, how much sleep I need to get, and how much fuel I need to achieve this end, and then people get frustrated. I have been at it for X amount of months, and I'm working my ass off. I saw all these improvements, and now it's slowing down.
That's the plateau. You start to go from up, and then it tapers off and then it starts to go down if you stay in there. Switch up the stimulus. It's something as simple and as silly as, “I will use a squat.” What's your set and rep scheme? How much weight are you using? What's your tempo? What's your speed coming up from the bottom position?
Are there any pauses at the bottom? Do we use chains, bands, and different things to provide an accommodating resistance versus a normal weight resistance? It's still the same squat. It's the same exercise, but what minor tweak can we throw in there to then have the body adapt to something that's a little bit different? Now it’s enough of the stimulus in a different way to make these improvements somewhere down the road for than, “Every time I go to the gym, I do 3 sets of 10 back squats, and I have been doing the same weight for three months.” Your body knows exactly what it needs.
To bring it back to archery now that I'm thinking about it. I can put those reps in every day, but my favorite way to put those reps in is to go to an awesome spot I have access to. American Bowmen. It's a 3D archery course. It's in the mountains. You have snow. It's 50 some acres and 40 targets. It's cut down to twenty targets because one side of it is north facing or has northern exposure, so there's no way you could go on it in the winter.
Scott, the president who runs it, shout-out to Scott and the people in American Bowmen who put in the time. They go and change the course. They change the targets. They change it up. There's no better way to be as close to a real-life hunting situation than it is going and shooting at these 3D targets. It's set up like golf. You have to shoot from a certain amount of pins depending on your bow setup. If you are doing it as a competition, then you score yourself so you can keep track of how you did at the end of the course.
Depending on where you hit the animal in the vitals, there are different rings on the targets and that's how you score yourself. More importantly, when they start to move this around, some of these shots you are shooting through aspen trees and the gap is that big. Now you have this blocking your field of view on an elk, and the elk is 60 yards away, and you have to make this gap in between. That shoot is between 6 inches, or you may have to lean out over a tree or something or change your body position. You can go to an archery range. Like if you go to Rocky Mountain Specialty Gear or No Limits, and I'm not knocking any of that.
Stand on polished concrete and shoot arrows from 20 yards. That's the only place you are going to be comfortable when it comes down to the actual act of hunting. That's truly the only place you are going to be comfortable, and how often you are standing on that in a hunting situation. That's why I look at it, and that's why I invest my time going up there, and I love it. It's so awesome to have that challenge. I'd be damned that I don't know anybody that shot a perfect score up there. I'm sure that there's a guy, but a lot of times, I'm up there by myself. That's the other thing. There are no interruptions or cell service.
That's the difference between training and then competition when it comes to sport. If you are keeping training always in this clean and nice little sterile box all the time. The polished concrete floor from 20 yards, it's the same thing over and over, and there's nothing wrong with that because those are good reps too. Change the environment. You’re still drawing a bow. Change your footing. You’re still drawing a bow. Change your target distance. You’re still drawing a bow. Are we shooting down at something?
There's a shot there. It's like a 50-foot cliff. You are leaning over this cliff. There's a danger element involved with it too, which is awesome. To draw your bow like this on flat ground but then to like tip yourself over with a compound, it's different.
It is, but you look at it and like, “You are slinging arrows.” Wrong. You are not. To me, that's one of the cool parts of what I get to do because I can create a movement drill and work on multi-directional movement patterns. It's nice and neat. I got cones and lines. It's very controlled and sterile, but then I start peppering a little bit more chaos into it.
Now we are going to do this. Now you are going to react to my voice, or you are going to react to this implement. Now it's the same drill, but now things are going to hit a little bit differently. You are going to have to respond a little bit differently because that's what happens in sports. For context, for everybody out there, I have never haunted a day in my life. I do want to change that. I want to bring that up specifically.
When you brought this up earlier, calling your buddy and being like, “I want to do this, and you are going to hold me accountable,” I'm driving up here going, “I know so many people that do this and I have been so afraid to reach out to them or to ask them because I'm an idiot.” It’s putting yourself in those positions of learning a new skill and then challenging it in an open arena or environment.
Now, if you look at mixed martial arts, you can have the best training camp and all this preparation. You feel great going into it. You have a tweak or this or that, whatever the case may be. You go to walk out, and you are like, “I am so ready for this.” There's another person across from you on that cage that gets a vote. There are all these conditions. The weather gets a vote when you are hunting. The terrain gets a vote. The animal gets a vote. All these things go factor into it to where there's now you are not in this clean, controlled, or chaos-eliminated environment, which is fine.
The weather, terrain, and even the animal get a vote when you’re hunting. All these things get factored into it.
As much as it's one-on-one, it's not really one-on-one. The odds are so stacked against you. Like the success rate for a bow hunting elk in Colorado, I want to say it's 20% or less.
See? You are intriguing me more.
Think about how good you feel. Did you see the bull that Marc shot? It’s incredible. It’s such a badass bull. Perfect scenario. That's one thing I respect about Marc is the way that he portrays hunting and what he brings to the table and how he shares it is incredible because it's more about the journey than it is the actual “What I killed.”
I have heard that about hunting from different podcasts and guys who talk about it. They were like, “There's hunting, and then there's the kill,” and it's not the same thing. I don't know if you feel the same way about that.
It's not. I don't like the killing part. I hate it. I get emotional. There have been times when I have cried. There have been times when I haven't done it because I didn't feel right about it, and I could have. I kick myself in the ass when I'm driving home in my truck. Do you want a bow hunt, or what hunting do you want to get into?
Bow or rifle.
I'd be glad to help you on the archery side. I don't know how much help I'd be on the rifle side because I haven't done it. I have rifle hunted, and I haven't done it in so long, and I choose not to. I would be glad to help you with any of that. It’s my favorite pastime.
I'm super down. My wife is from the western slope of Colorado, so that's not a new thing for her. She's been a part of those experiences. She's been like, “I don't want to do that anymore.” Just fill the freezer thing. I see all these people doing it. Again, I'm like, “I don't want to be these guys.”
I enjoy shooting my bow more than I enjoy the hunting side of it, like the preparation. It's something that keeps me accountable. It's something that I will hold myself accountable for because I don't want to be that guy who bosses a shot during archery season. It's so good for me. I enjoy going to the 3D range more than I enjoy hunting. I get my buddies to bash the shit on me like, “What the fuck is wrong with you?” It's like, “I enjoy that.” It’s awesome.
That's your jam. You can't knock somebody when that's their jam.
Do you have a bow?
I don't have a bow. I have shot a trad bow a few times. Compound once. That was an interesting process, but I have a rifle. We talk a little bit more off-air about that stuff.
Let's get you out there. I might call you to hold me accountable for some strength and conditioning.
I’m down.
Cool. That way, we are giving something to each other.
I love it.
I’m glad you said that. Do you mind if I piggyback on what you said?
Go for it. The fighters have heard me say this. Net positive. I’m a stickler now, and I hope to hang onto this for as long as possible. Net positive experiences. Net positive conversations and sitting down here with you guys.
What do you mean by net positive? A positive experience or interaction?
All of the above. I want people to be able to come in. When they train with me as their coach or trainer, I want them to have at the end of the 1 week, 1 month, 6 months, or a block of training. I want them to be able to look back. Maybe we hit some stumbling blocks along the way, and those things happen. It's called life. Is there a net positive effect from this point to this point? I want to have net positive interactions. I want to sit down like this and have these types of conversations. I want to go try something I have never done before and suck at it but have the wherewithal to be like, “I'm going to stick with this and get better.”
Like I was talking to my son. I want to have these experiences and memories that I can hang onto. Later down the road, sit down and have a drink with a buddy and be like, “Do you remember that time and remember we did this? Do you remember when we were out there?” Maybe then, that's when we pull out the photo albums, digital prints, or whatever it is and go through that stuff and be like, “I'm glad I did that, tried that, and put myself in that uncomfortable spot. I'm glad I had that conversation. I'm glad I asked that question.”
That’s a great outlook. I wish more people had that because there are so many people that live their life in misery or they feel like they are sometimes, and I have been there. It's easy to fall into that. I'm no saint by any means, but it takes awareness of waking up in the morning and being like, “I'm going to have a good day.” It takes that. You can wake up simply and be like, “I'm going to have a bad day.” You have a choice. It's 50/50, basically.
If we wake up and it's like, “I know I'm going to have a bad day. I slept like crap. I’m running late. I got to go to the gas station. I turn on my car. My gas light pops on.” There are all these little micro crappy things are happening. At the end of the day, when you come home, and you put your head back down on that same pillow, was it a net positive day or net negative day?
You had stumbling blocks in the beginning. “The day is not over.” It hits us all the time. Weather conditions or traffic. Something's going on. You are supposed to get with somebody, and their schedule doesn't line up or something. Did that ruin your entire day? Did it really? If you get rear-ended by an idiot not paying attention because they are texting and driving, that could ruin your whole day, and I get it. That's probably going to be a net negative day. If you have 1 net negative day out of 7 days in a week and you have 6 net positives.
How do you get a net positive day? It's all right here, right?
It lives right here.
It's your perception of stuff, too.
Your thoughts, attitude, perception, disposition, feelings, beliefs, or interactions.
What do you like, and what influenced you? I think that influence is a huge factor. There's no way I ever would have smoked Marlboro Reds and wanted to be a roadie in elementary school if it wasn't for Metallica. To the point, there are all the times I have been in trouble in my life. It's because I was influenced by something else, whether it was by people. I'm not talking about substances or anything. Alcohol always plays a part in it.
Your boys, your crew, and who's with you at those moments.
What's happening to them is a huge factor for a net positive. It's cool. I like that outlook.
I'm not trying to sit here trying to be some happiness guru. I got it all figured out. I don't. I got to have something like a mantra.
If you had it all figured out, it wouldn't be any fun.
It would suck like, “What am I doing here? I'm done.”
Do you listen to Andrew Huberman at all?
Yes. I started reading to him. I got introduced to him, and then I listened to his podcast on alcohol. Have you heard that one?
I haven't yet. I need to go back and listen to this.
It’s so good. There's a bunch I need to listen to, but that one in particular, I like his position on, “I'm going to give you as much scientific data as possible, and I'm going to let you do whatever you want to do with it.” I'm like, “Yes. Good on you because there are people that can, on occasion, go out and have a drink, this and that.” The other is cool, but I heard that, and I was like, “Biochemically and the physiology, all this stuff is starting to make more and more sense.” As I could follow along with the majority of it, some of it I was like, “This is over my head.”
He talks about waking up and starting your day, too, like a huge part of it. I have applied some of those things, and they make a huge difference, and it's not your mental state. It's not waking up and saying, “I'm going to have a good day.” It's doing some things. The first action is to literally wake up and move instead of laying in bed. If you lay in bed, you sit there and think negative thoughts. I don't know what it is. Unless you are consciously thinking, “I'm only going to think about positive stuff,” but that negative shit is still back there.
It's always there, and it becomes a question of, “Do you listen to that and have a conversation with it?” I heard Jocko was talking about this, and Kobe Bryant was talking about this too. When you do those things, like first thing in the morning, it's colder in Colorado in the morning. It's cold, and you get out of your covers, and you are like, “It's cold.” Do you know what feels good? Getting back in the covers. Do you know what feels good? That pillow. It feels good. All that warm, fuzzy, and nice stuff. Meanwhile, the clock is still ticking, and you have somewhere you need to be or you have stuff that you need to get done. Do you negotiate with yourself? The snooze or alarm.
One hundred percent you negotiate.
Five more minutes. Two more minutes. I need 30 seconds. Why? I'm so guilty of all this stuff.
Still to this day.
It's every single day. My alarm goes off, and I'm like, “Get up.” It's like I go down that hole, but I have to start changing these micro habits because it’s the habits. I love how Andrew Huberman talks about this stuff. He's like, “It's these little habits that we do. It's not the motivational speech we heard or the video clip we saw.”
All that shit is going to fade away.
It's fleeting. Somebody else is going to say the same freaking thing. What is the first action step that you took that day? Did you get up with enough time? I want everybody who's reading this to understand that I'm being introspective. I'm talking about me right now. I'm not talking outwardly to anybody. Did I get up with enough time to get everything I need to do before I leave the house?
Did I give myself enough time to get from the house to work? Did I scrape off the snow enough, or did I do a half-ass job? Did I mistime it? I sat in the wrong lane of traffic, and I should have been in this lane versus that lane. Did I put the right food in my body? Did I get enough water in? All of these things that we have, at the end of the day, again, you are going to put your head back on that pillow. Hopefully, God willing. Can you review that day and be honest with yourself and go, “I did it right?”
It’s much as those micro things are important when it comes to physically moving or being somewhere or putting you in the right mindset. You also got to dial it and chunk it back. The one thing that I have learned is that sometimes you got to say, “Fuck it.” Who fucking cares? I made a schedule, and it's totally fucked right now.
If you schedule your day hour by hour, I will be damned if there's anybody that can stick to that. Maybe a celebrity with publicists and whatever and all that stuff, but I'm not that person. To bring it back to it, there are certain things, and there are certain influences that stick out in my mind. One-liners are huge for me.
One that has stuck with me for a long time. The first time I heard it was several years ago. I'm pretty sure it was from C.T. Fletcher, and we have talked about this. I might have even brought this up at the last episode because that's the only time I have ever talked about C.T. Fletcher, but is it worth dying for? Is what you are doing right now, is it worth dying for? To me, that puts it in perspective. If you start looking at it like what's the most important in your life, it's obviously my kids, my family, and my wife. Short of that, all the other stuff, it's the sidecar. The rest of the stuff is the main engine.
I call it the meat and potatoes. Meat and potatoes and everything else and side dishes. Everything matters in your mindset and in how you conduct yourself. I fail at this all the freaking time how we conduct ourselves, how we interact with people, how we get things done, how we choose to prioritize things, and how we give ourselves some slack. We give ourselves room to rest and say, “I have been going. I need to chill,” and that's okay.
I get it. The Jockos of the world, the Goggins, and the campaigns. These guys are going 24/7 like these guys are robots. No. They go hard, and when they rest, chill, do nothing, and get to enjoy something that's relaxing, they have earned the right to do it. That's the theme that I have picked up from all of these guys. Not just them but many other people.
Their hard work outweighs the rest. I can guarantee you that.
Like Bito. Look at how hard he goes with his company. Follow on social media. He bounces out of town. He's like, “Bye, I'm going to disconnect. I'm going to go chilling. I'm going to hit the reset button.” He has earned the rights to do those things. None of those guys are saying, “I deserve rest, a day off, or a cheat meal.” They say the same thing.
This is what I hear, what I take in, or my interpretation is I have earned the right to. It's way different than I deserve. I'm a stickler between deserved and earned. If you've earned the right to do something, do it. If you've been busting your ass in the gym and you are like, “I want to go have a bite of.” Okay. Go ahead. Have a bite of. That's what you said you were going to do. I'm going to have a bite of, not the whole stinking pie. Don't give yourself too much leeway, or a cheat meal becomes a cheat day. It's super easy. It's like that pillow in the warm blanket. That's super easy. Don't let a cheat meal become a cheat day or cheat weekend become cheat week. It's a snowball effect.
I'm going to bring it back to hunting again. That is a major reset for me and an appreciation for how easy I have in a normal life. When you go out of a backpack and wake up on the cold ground, the simple thing of walking into a warm bathroom and having a toilet is pretty fucking nice or having your coffee maker automatically set on a timer, so when you wake up, you have coffee.
We are surrounded by luxuries.
When you are hungry, not having the wind blow out your Jetboil stove. Not having to eat Top Ramen, MREs, Biltong, or crappy trout. It’s the stuff like that, those little things, spending an extensive amount of time and then the hard work that goes into it. You are talking about like, “I never,” and this is my own fault. I put a lot of effort into what I do, and there are a lot of nights when I work late, but not like hunting.
There's not where I'm getting up at 3:30 to hike to a spot where the elks are at or when the sun comes up at 5:00, and then I haven't seen an elk all day. I think they are over here. I then walk another 7 miles or whatever and sit there until absolute dark, then have to hike somewhere, and then set up a camp and make dinner, and then get back up at 3:30 every day. You can sleep in there too. You can stay in your sleeping bag and stuff, but you want to talk about that's why the success rate is 20%.
All of what you just said just sounds miserable, which makes me want to do it more.
It sucks. That's why I like going to the 3D range because then I can get back in my truck, jam some tunes, and go home to my Traeger grill and cook some wild game after shooting a bunch of them, but it is. At the same time, it's like sitting on top of a mountain with nobody else but your own thoughts, and that's pretty cool. Hearing elk bugle in the distance is incredible.
I would venture to say that's your happy place or at least one of them.
No, it is. We didn't talk about anything that I thought we were going to talk about here, with it being the new year and everything. There are a ton of people out there that can't afford to go see a strength and conditioning coach. Maybe they already have a workout plan, had one from last year, or are starting one.
What do you think are some of the set down, guidelines, or rules that you could give somebody like that so they can maximize their time? That's pretty much like common sense, like range of motion, tracking mobility, or maybe even joint mobility. That's a huge thing, too, that I have had to realize later in life like, “I'm not as agile as I used to be. How do I get that back?” I have gone to physical therapists, and stuff like that has helped me.
In the broadest way to answer that question, I would start by saying, “You have to look at what your routine is.” Let's start there. “Where can we fit in an exercise routine?” You might not even have to leave your house to start this. Maybe you do, maybe you don't. Maybe you buy a set of dumbbells. Maybe you get a jump rope. I wish more people had jump ropes.
They are so easy to bring on the road with you too. You are spot on with that because you have to look at your lifestyle. For me, the road is still involved. Hotel rooms are still involved. If you are staying at a casino or something, the gym hours are retarded. I shouldn't use that word again. Strike two, but they are. It’s dumb because they want you to be on the casino floor. The gym is only open from 10:00 in the morning until 3:00. It's worse than banker hours. If I'm working a normal job where I have to be there during the day, I'm not going to the gym.
What is your routine? What can you fit in? What can you accomplish? Here are five things, and these are very nonspecific, but they are specific. Can you bend, which is to say, can you squat? Can you hinge at the hip? Can you push and pull from the upper body? From there, are we incorporating exercises that include our trunk? There's this old thought process of, “I'm going to hit the gym. I'm going to do X amount of time on the warmup. I'm going to hit the weights for X amount of time, and then I'm going to finish with 5 to 10 minutes of abs.”
If you were training for 45 to 60 minutes in the weight room, and you were neglecting to contract your abdominal wall, that's going to slow your process of improvement, and then there's nothing magical about a five-minute window of doing 1,000 crunches. Sorry folks. There just is not. You are going to get good at doing a bunch of damn crunches.
There’s nothing magical about a five-minute window of doing a thousand crunches.
How did that help your squat, pressing exercises, and pulling exercises? This thing that sits in the middle has to manage. It is the centerpiece. It is the trunk and core. How is this stuff going to get better if this thing is my limiting factor? We include that in everything you do. You are in a hotel room and traveling.
Pushups, squats, lunges, lateral lunges, backstep lunges, low planks, and high planks, and step up from low to high. Can we do a shoulder tap? Can we hold a single-arm plank for an extended amount of time? There’s one that's cool. I don't know if we talked about this last time or not, but take a bath towel or hand towel. Roll it up and squeeze that thing, but then pull out. In terms of tension, keep that tension while you slowly bicep curl and overhead press. Once you get to the overhead position, use your lats and feel like you are pulling down like you are doing an underhand pull-up. Send the hands down by squeezing your triceps, keeping that tension out the entire time. Try ten, and tell me how you feel.
Tell me how your body feels. Tell me how your shoulders feel and all of those muscles involved. When you press overhead, don't relax. Remember, this is the core, the trunk, and the centerpiece of everything. As you go overhead, it's easy for me to elevate my ribcage based on my shoulder position. What controls my ribs? What connects my ribs to my pelvis? All the trunk and core muscles.
On the front side of the body, that's my abdominal wall. Can I squeeze and do these exercises to where I'm tight in my midsection? I’m doing it now. I can brace my midsection. My face is not going to turn red. I'm not going to start talking like this. I'm going to be able to hold a conversation. Can you do that and do that upper body-based exercise? In between, maybe you hold a low squat hold 15 to 30 seconds. I have given you exercises to do, and I have asked you to bring a towel. You can fit a jump rope or some device to pull from.
I travel with elastic bands a lot too. Those are awesome.
You can have some fun with those.
They don't even have to be heavy-duty ones. You can do a lot with a couple of bands.
Think about it. If you are on the road, let's say a one-week timeframe, how many days are you on the road? It used to be a lot like 200 days out of the year.
When I was touring, it was even more than that, but now, maybe 50. It's not that much.
You know, and you have a roundabout idea of how much time you are going to be on the road, so you know what you can take with you. What's going to make it through the X-ray scan and not set anything off? That's enough of a stimulus on the road so that when you come back home, and you get to the gym that you go to where you go to your home gym, now you can start increasing the weights and the intensity because this was a buffer that kept everything moving along.
It's like traffic. As long as traffic is still moving, we are still going forward. When we clear past whatever's going on, it opens right back up. That's the same thing. When you go on the road, I'm limited to this. It's a traffic jam. I have so much time to get this done. Still do it and do it with intent. Be mindful and purposeful about every repetition that sets up the execution, and it will pay you dividends, I promise. Do not check boxes, so when you come back home, you are not like, “I was on the road, and I slept in a plane and my body's this, that, and the other.”
You were still moving. When you come home, now you have an additional platform to work off of and your body's like, “I am home. I know what we can do. I know what we have in front of me.” Now, I have a bunch of different options as far as equipment goes. Especially if you go to a gym outside the home, they should have a lot of stuff for you and a lot of different options. Now you can start playing with more variables, but still moving and doing something. It is that. Keep it simple. Keep it routine. Reach out whether you know a trainer or a coach. If you want to reach out to me or if you want to reach out to any of the coaches at Landow Performance, we will take care of you.
Even if it's having a consultation, “I don't know where to start,” we can give you some ideas. We can ease somebody into that. At least within the gym in that setting, it can be a one-on-one experience. It can be a group experience and it depends on how many people are there. We are trying to hit everybody in terms of price point because we don't want to be this exclusive gym where your income has to be a certain dollar amount with multiple commas for you to come in and say, “I train here.”
We want to take care of people because if they have a goal and exercise is a driver of that goal, how can I help? What can I do to help you? Maybe it's not me. Maybe it's a different coach. Maybe I'm not your flavor. I could be a little gritty at times. I work well with people that are similar to me. It’s a personality thing. If you work with somebody else and you are like, “I need something different,” then go with something different. You get one vehicle. You get only get so many laps around this. Do something about it.
It’s taking the time to do it and the discipline of doing the reps. That is one thing that always goes in my suitcase when I travel. Bringing it back to archery, I can't take my bow. I can take my thumb release, and I have a piece of 550 cord that's set up with my exact draw length that's got a D-loop at the end of it that I can hook, and I can still do my same shot sequence, but I'm not shooting an arrow. I’m dry-firing a string, but it’s huge.
It's purposeful reps. The body sees it and recognizes it. It puts you in a place to relate it back to what you want to do. That is a psychological, physical, and emotional endeavor, but when you go out and do that thing, you are prepared on multiple fronts. It’s short of turning your head and seeing something, and then you get that adrenaline rush. The only thing that's hard to provide is that feeling. Short of that, you are doing everything you need to do to put yourself in the best position to succeed. Tell me where the downside is in any of that.
There's not.
It's easy not to do that shit.
It's so simple. It's way easier not to do it than to do it. Let’s say somebody gets their routine. They get their plan set up. They have taken some of this advice now that you've given. How are they keeping track of, “Am I gaining progress? Am I getting enough rest, sleep, or recovery? Am I on track to hit my goals?” Maybe it could be a physical look that you are after. Maybe it's a sports-specific thing. What are some ways that you can keep some checks and balances, or how would you do that as a coach?
You got to write it down. At least, that's how I do it. Whether you track it on your phone, tablet, laptop, or pen and paper, have something that you can refer back to that you stated a goal and that you can track progress along the way and be specific about your progress. Understand that along the way that there are specific devices that can mess with your head, and one of those things is a scale.
Let's talk about this real quick. If you are in a weight class sport, you need to be familiar with where your body is at relative to competition and where you need to be walking around pre-comp and comp. Outside of that, I don't like people getting overly excited and too consistent or overly consistent with stepping on a scale. 100 pounds of bricks and 100 pounds of feathers both weigh 100 pounds. All the scale is going to tell you is your displacement of gravity on the surface of the earth. The end. If somebody has a specific body comp and their goal is, “I want to lose 15 pounds,” 15 pounds of what?
You can easily lose 15 pounds of muscle over fat. If your goal is to incrementally, I will start smaller. I want to lose a couple of pounds. A couple of pounds of what? A couple of pounds of body fat. How do you going to measure that? I don't have the means to go out and do a DEXA scan and measure my body fat percentage.
I'm not going to sit there and try to figure out a caliper to pinch myself. Your clothes will tell you. Your wardrobe will tell you. How you feel will tell you if you are trying to put on more weight, specifically muscle mass, because 100 pounds of feathers and 100 pounds of bricks are all the same. If you are going out smashing freaking Big Macs all day, you are going to put on weight. Is it the right weight that you want to put on?
Be specific in your goals. Don't write down, “I want to lose 10 pounds. I want to gain 10 pounds.” Ten pounds of what? If you eat like crap, you are going to gain 10 pounds. If you are slamming beers all day, you are going to gain 10 pounds. That's what your goal was. That's what you wrote down. That's what you said, so be as specific as possible and make them manageable and achievable goals. What would it do me any good to say, “Within one year from this show coming out, I want to put on 40 pounds of muscle, and I want to compete in MMA or jiu-jitsu. I want to skydive, and I want to hunt with a trad bow, and I want a rifle hunt.”
That's a lot, and they are all lofty. Let’s pick something. Maybe I want to start with I want to get more reps in on a compound bow. It’s achievable. Now I want to get more reps at a specific distance. Achievable. I want to hit a 3D target. Now we are getting more specific. Once we start getting into the specificity of what we are trying to achieve, at the end of this, I want to have a successful hunt. That's what I want.
If I start there, how can I back engineer? That's my end. What are my means to get to the end? If we can do that, at least we have some guiding principles. We might have to take some detours here and there. Cool, but now we have something in front of us. If you tell somebody, now you have another set of eyes and ears going, “Are you doing the thing that you said you wanted to do? That’s important.” It was important enough to tell me, “Is it still important to you?”
Strength And Conditioning: Determine your means to get to the end. If you can do that, now you have guiding principles. You might have to take some detours here and there, and that’s cool, but now you have something in front of you.
It’s having those constant reminders and understanding that progress is not linear. You don't go from here to here. It’s chaos, but can you get to that end state or that end goal that you are trying to achieve? If you can, and we talked about this earlier, now what? Pick another goal. Do something. Net positive, forward outlook, and benefit. When it comes to recovery, and that's a big thing right now, there are specific ways to track that. There's a company called Oura Ring, and it tracks body temperature, sleep, cycles of sleep, resting heart rate, and Heart Rate Variability or HRV.
You can get a WHOOP band, which does the same thing. It looks like a Fitbit, but it gives you all of this data. If you have all of this data and you don't know what the hell it means, get with somebody who knows what they are talking about, so they can break this thing down to tell you, “What is an HRV? What does this mean when I'm measuring? My HRV is at this number, and Bobby's HRV is at a totally different number.”
He's a different person than I am, so we are not going to have the exact same HRV. When it comes to heart rate variability and recovery and work output in terms of how much we can stress this system to make the system more robust and more resilient. That happens like the bodybuilder was talking about in the recovery stage. Are we recovering properly? Are we hydrating and eating the things that will set us up for success to adapt to that stress like I talked about earlier, so we can get better in moving that forward progress of achieving that goal? Do we smash a pizza and crush some beers because you deserve it?
“I worked out hard. Those donuts are calling me.” No, they are not. It's that freaking voice whispering over your ear. Are you listening to that voice? Are you telling yourself what you are going to do? Tell yourself what you will do and do it because that little voice is everything you can't do, shouldn't attempt, should do to feel better that you've deserve that you can justify and rationalize and placate to your emotions and feelings. Motivation is fleeting. It's fluid.
We are human beings too. We do succumb. It happens, but if we make those things happen less and less over time and we are doing things that we are supposed to do more and more net positive. Do you hit the number on the scale? Do you hit the goal you want to achieve in the weight room? Do you improve your mobility? Can you last longer in a hunt? Can you survive those conditions? Can it suck, and you'll be like, “This sucks, but this is not that bad?”
We’re human beings, and we do succumb. It happens. But if we make those things happen less and less over time, and we’re doing the things we’re supposed to do more and more, that’s a positive.
That's a hell of a thing to say in crappy conditions, “This is not that bad.” Can you laugh? Can you make a joke? Can you break the tension? Can you be with a buddy and bust his balls a little bit in a good way to where it's now a little friendly competition? Now the suck of the thing went down psychologically, not physically. Now we can last a little bit longer. You proved to yourself that you have a little bit more in the tank.
It’s so important to have that humor in any sucking situation. Embrace the suck or whatever that cliché saying is.
Be careful who you are around with that humor. When you are at the gym, be careful who is in earshot. I'm a guy that I have very thick skin, and I laugh at stuff that most people would cringe at. I love that stuff because I can take a joke, but some people, especially in this day and age and in a gym setting, you say something to your buddy, and somebody walks by, and they catch a piece of it, now you are potentially getting kicked out of that gym forever because somebody caught something.
I got kicked out of a casino just walking by a dealer and having a conversation with a roadie buddy of mine. They caught something that sounded much worse than what I was actually saying, and they didn't understand it in its context. That always seems to be the case. On this show, I have a couple of those. We have gone through a couple of steps here. The biggest thing with people coming into the new year, and I'm guilty of this too, is like, “It's a new year. It's a fresh start,” but it’s not. You are dealing with the same shit that you had last year.
Tomorrow is a new day. Tomorrow is a fresh start.
It's great to motivate people. How do you keep the mindset for ambitious people who want to come in and start training with you? How do you keep them in that mindset or hold them accountable for coming back?
Remind them why they reached out in the first place. It's that simple. On a day in history, you reached out by whatever means. Even if it's showing up to the gym and it happens to be me who talks to you or anybody there. You came in. You picked up the phone, you sent that email, and you went to the website. You went to the Instagram page for a reason.
Let's do this. I'm going to remind you of those crappy days when you didn't get enough sleep or when you were not feeling great, and you have that negotiation thought process in your head. You pick up the phone, and you are starting to type, “I don't know if I'm feeling it.” If you are working with me, this is where I'm not everybody's flavor. The day doesn't care. That clock is going to tick forward. The sun is going to rise and fall, and it doesn't care what you got done.
The day doesn’t care. The clock is going to tick forward. The sun will rise and fall, and it doesn’t care what you got done. When you look in the mirror and have that conversation with yourself, did you do enough?
It’s a scientific fact.
When you lay your head down on that pillow, or when you go brush your teeth at night and look in the mirror and have that conversation with yourself, that's between you and you. You and God, however you want to have that conversation, but you are going to have the conversation. Did you do enough? If you didn't, and you had a negative day, let's talk about that.
Let's talk about the elephant in the room. Let's address it. How did you feel, to be honest? Do you want to do that again? No? Okay. You can tell me now. You have to show me. I told myself to that same standard. I can tell myself what I'm going to do, but now I have to show up and do the thing. Did I show up? That's half the battle. Did I take the action step of doing the thing? I get the idea of 90% of the battle is showing up. Technically, you can show up to the parking lot and be like, “I made it to the gym.”
You can show up at the gym, walk around, and not maximize your time like you said.
You literally walk in, walk around, and walk right out the door. Did you go to the gym? Yes. Is that the end of it? If it's not, did you achieve what you set out to achieve? Not every day is going to be this fantastic day of, “I'm crushing it in the gym.” That's not how life works, but can we still get there? This is what I tell people. If you can show up and walk in the door and put yourself in that position, as a coach, I can help you get through this. I will help you get through this.
We will maximize that time, and I have had so many conversations with people that as they are leaving, “I didn't think I had that in me or I didn't think I had enough in the tank to get through that. I didn't know what we were doing now, but I was doubting everything on the car ride over.” At least you showed up, and then you did the action step that was next. First, I'm going to cancel now.
That's what I love about going to jiu-jitsu. If you show up, it's fucking on. It’s on, and if you don't, what do they say when you show up again? “Where the hell have you been?” They notice. They know. I haven't been back in a long time. Let's not talk about that. It’s the beginning of the new year. I'm sure 90% of the people that come to you, or I'm assuming, when they come to you, what is the first thing that they say when you ask them what they are trying to achieve? Is it, “I want to lose weight?” It’s for the general population.
It's generally weight loss or weight gain and weight gain specifically to muscle mass and strength and how they look in their clothes. If people were honest, you want to look good in your attire. You want to feel good. When it's just you and you are by yourself, and you strip down. You are looking in the mirror. What are the thoughts going through your head?
Are they positive thoughts? Are you proud of your process? Are you not happy with where you are at? Be honest with yourself, and that's okay. When you reach out to somebody, be honest with them too. Know exactly what you want, and then it's the coach's job or the trainer's job to start asking follow-up questions. In my opinion, we should be asking follow-up questions to get more data points and more input on what they are searching for and why.
Do their habits match up with their goals, or do they not? Do they understand that it's a multifaceted process between where your mind, body, diet, hydration, or sleep is at? There are so many factors that go into this. You can't move in an object a couple of times and walk out the door and be like, “I'm freaking Superman now.” That would be awesome, but it doesn't exist.
It’s having a thorough holistic conversation about what they want and what they are trying to achieve, as much as somebody can give you who's a complete stranger in that scenario, and then it’s building rapport. Be authentic in building that rapport. The more they know they can be vulnerable with you, the more they will trust you. The more they trust you, the more they will open up and allow you access to certain things that maybe they weren't willing to share initially, and that's okay because you are a stranger. Even though you are this third party nobody knows about, and they are keeping quiet about, you are still a stranger.
Build as much rapport and be authentic in building that rapport. The more people know that they can be vulnerable with you, the more they will trust you. The more they trust you, the more they’ll open up and allow you access to things they weren’t willing to share initially.
If they can build that rapport over time, you can start to see some serious momentum build up because then you can start to ask questions that may be a little bit off-putting initially. When somebody comes in and says, “I want to lose 10 pounds,” I want you to write down every single thing that you eat. 1) That's going to be a tedious process. 2) You are probably going to judge me. I'm not going to tell you honestly what I eat.
I'm going to tell you what you want to hear. Let's have those conversations as we are going through the process of training so you understand that your goals now become inherently my goals and the direction that I want to give to you because you are only successful if they are. It requires time, effort, and money. There's a cost associated with this stuff. There's a cost associated with anything we do.
If somebody is getting started, like maybe they haven't worked out in ten years or maybe they haven't done it since high school. Maybe they have an active lifestyle but want to change a few things. One of those things is they want to lose weight. Aside from the diet, exercise standpoint or strength standpoint, or conditioning standpoint, what would be the first advice you would give them if they didn't have the means to reach out to a personal trainer, strength and conditioning coach, or something like that?
Even if they are trying to seek advice and are doing everything that they can to clean up their diet and work on what they put in their system, I have this thing about resistance training. We have to understand that we have to work against something in order to build muscle. That can be a scary thing because then we get into the whole sticky situation of, “I don't want to get bulky,” and this and that. That's all crap. The more muscle you have to metabolize fat as fuel, you start to lose weight, specifically in that body composition of fat loss. I'm not saying you have to be a bodybuilder, competitor, or bikini-figure person.
I can tell you this too. It's damn near impossible to be a bodybuilder unless you are 100% dedicated to that. I lift weights a lot, and I don't look anything like those guys. Maybe I'm not doing it, but it's multifactorial.
It will if you spend a lot more time doing it and dedicate your life to that thing and do the deep dive into it. I will put it this way. Maybe reconcile that you are afraid of it, and now that you've recognized it and are aware of it, you can do something about it. This is going to be silly, but follow me because I say this a lot to people. If I have something stuck in my teeth or I got a little booger hanging out, and you say nothing to me this whole time, and I'm like, “I'm going to hit the restroom before I take off.”
I look in the mirror, and I'm like, “Nobody told me anything.” I didn't know because you weren't aware. The second we are made aware of something, then we have the ability to inflict change positively or negatively. Be aware that you are afraid to talk about it. At least, now you are aware of something. Now you have a choice. We can slowly walk into this process, and that's okay. Reach out and ask some questions, “I go to this gym. I can only afford to go to and wherever. Where can I start?”
Having an outside perspective also helps somebody that's not a friend or a loved one because they are going to lie to you. I hate to say it. I heard a comic say this, and it's so true because my daughter's done it to me. Have your kid at four years old draw you, and that will give you an idea of what your body composition looks like and how they interpret you, whether it's a big bushy beard or a fat head.
They will give you the brutalized truth, but no. It’s having somebody who's a third party that doesn't know you. You don't have to be mean to somebody. You don't have to degrade them and be condescending, but you got to be honest. Let's have an honest conversation. Is this what you want to do? Are you ready to take this and do that action step? There's that pre-contemplation and action step required for you to evoke change in something. When you are ready for that action step, be serious. If you are not, then you are not. It’s okay. I get it.
As much as you need to be held accountable, I know I have said that many times. You also have to genuinely want what your goal is.
Are your habits and your goals in alignment? Are you doing the thing? It’s the action step. You can have all the goals that you want, but it’s like being the smartest guy on the planet and never revealing that information to anybody. How useful is it? There’s the old adage that knowledge is power. I had a college professor that said, “I disagree. The application of that knowledge is powerful.” It’s the doing. It's you got to go.
That's what blows me away. If you dial it back and look at humans, we are these weird things. We are basically a pile of meat that can sing, talk, and move heavy shit.
I want to go in so many different directions with that comment.
Eric, this has been awesome. Let's go ahead and wrap it up at that. Before we do, if people want to reach out to you specifically and get some training advice or maybe want to come to see you, do you have to be in the Denver area or do you guys have an online consultation type deal as well?
Yes. If you are in the area, I'm a big fan of getting people in front of me to go through, even if it's a consultation. I'd rather have a consultation in person than over the phone because if you don't know who I am, what I look like, what the gym looks like, how our stuff is set up, the energy within the room, it’s way better to have that comprehensive experience than to try to attempt to do it electronically over the phone or in emails.
I like people to show up. If that's not the case, I have a gentleman who was in Colorado prior to now. He's in Las Vegas. A mixed martial artist. I have another athlete who started here, and now she's in Texas. I'm sending them remote workouts via an app, and I'm still building through that process of trying to create a broader reach.
Is this a personal thing?
This is through the gym. I do. Everything I do for strength and conditioning goes through Landow Performance, everything. Visit our website LandowPerformance.com. Find us on social media, whatever your particular outlet is of choice. I begged on social media earlier, but it is a double-edged sword. If you want to look me up on Instagram, I'm @EricTelly.
Please do me a favor. If it's connected to this or if it's related to specific goals, don't follow me and then troll me. Shoot me a message and let me know that you heard about me through whatever outlet and that you have some questions about strength and conditioning, personal training, sports performance, or whatever the case may be.
I will be able to interface with you because otherwise, I don't know who you are. That page that I have, it's public. I get these notifications like so-and-so is following you. I'm like, “I don't even know if you are a real person or not.” If you have questions, please, by all means, reach out in those avenues, and then we'll take it from there. I hope I keep stressing this point that it's not me. It's we at Landow Performance who are down to help you guys out with whatever you want to do. We have 30 coaches in that facility now.
How many square feet is that facility? I haven't been down there.
I used to know the exact square footage. This is our fourth iteration of the facility. It is huge. We have 8 squat racks and 4 VertiMax devices. We have seven sets of power blocks and cable machines within our weight room. We are not like Anytime Fitness. Not to bag on them, but we don't have a giant cardio section with 80 treadmills. We don't have a bunch of different leg extensions, leg curls, and all those types of machines. We have two cable machines within the facility. Everything else is weight-based.
You guys do have some wild machines. I think I have seen Drew Dober and a couple of other guys’ post of them doing this punching mobility. Let’s talk about it.
In the world of exercise science, there are ways to measure power output and speed velocity. We have force plates for jumping and force plates for a mid-thigh pull test strength. Even if you are squatting and want to see how much pressure you are putting into your left foot versus your right foot and your total force production, we can measure that. We can measure bar speed on a squat or a press, but these are all very linear things.
There's not a whole lot in terms of devices to test rotational forces. Specifically, power, speed, acceleration, deceleration, and the path of travel. There’s this Proteus Motion device, and guys, look this up. Pull this bad boy up, please. It is a device that a gentleman and his son developed at their house. They are MIT graduates, and it is 3D resistance. There are three different things that you can do with this machine. You can do a freestyle, which is whatever you want. You set the weight. It talks about measuring linear forces, like speed force production and rate of force development.
Is that a separate machine that does that? Is it a camera machine or something?
I will talk you through it as it goes up. We look at sports in different rotational forces. Now we can measure your watts, which is your power output or meters per second, which is your velocity. It can be measured in real time within the confines of the device. You have testing measures that you can look at and track over time that is specific to you. You can go in there and create different filters to measure you against other athletes in your sport of choice.
How does that translate? Let's say I saw Drew Dober on it. Can I go in and see if Drew Dober's input and output in that machine are in that database?
As a coach, I can see all of the data from everybody, but if I set up an account for you on that device, you can only see your numbers. I can print out all of your data.
I was going to say you have altitude, factory acts, and all these different gyms coming in at different times. These guys are potentially fighting each other.
We don't want to cross-contaminate or mud to the waters, but it's a way for us to measure different exercises and activities with specific regard to rotational forces.
What a great way to track your progress, especially if you are a fighter or some high-level jiu-jitsu person. I'm thinking of grip strength and pulling strength.
Pressing and pulling, it's all eccentrically based. Let me give context to that. On this device, if I have the single arm attachment and want to do a rotational punch, it's not a cable and a free weight. I can punch and stop it, and then I have to actively pull that thing back to the start position again. There's no eccentric phase to this.
If you think of eccentric as if you are doing a squat and everyone talks about doing negatives, there is no negative to this. Everything is all positive force production, and it's designed like that on purpose because what we know in exercise science is where do we get the majority of our soreness from? The eccentric phase versus the concentric.
Could you potentially train a bunch of stuff that's concentric only? Yes. Is that how life works? No. You have to train for all of it. I have used that device to test and measure myself and my clients. We have done different workouts there. I will freestyle some stuff for some conditioning in terms of rotation. I have worked with an athlete who was still on my roster, but she was coming back from ACL surgery.
I couldn't even load it up one side of her body. I had a bench in the Proteus, and we were doing a bunch of upper-body pushing, pulling, and all sorts of stuff. Even rotational-based exercises would be very lightweight, but you can adjust and have free reign on this thing. I tell people as long as it fits within the confines of the device, they can be creative with different movement patterns.
Is it an AI-type device? How does it work? There's got to be some resistance or mechanical part.
It's electronic resistance is based on a magnetic particle break. It's the flux capacitor at 1.21 gigawatts. The way that it's designed is to look at and measure certain activities. Are you a strength-based athlete? Are you a speed-based athlete? Do you need to work on more speed, strength or strength, speed or strength in different areas that this thing can measure? I'd love it because you can put anybody on this thing, and they have different tests for different athletes. You can create a test. I can build my own test for whatever population that I want to work with, and all of the data from those tests gets tracked right there.
I can pop up on my laptop and look at Drew Dober or Dustin Jacoby and what's their data like. I can look at some of the guys who are our Major League pitchers. I can look at my college kid and what's his rotational force in certain exercises. You can look at things from the right to the left bilateral or unilateral, and see if there are any deficiencies.
Is that a deficiency on that day, or have we trained it to where we have closed the gap on the deficiency? Now, I'm going to get into the weeds a little bit here, but sometimes you don't want to close the gap too much because that deficiency may be the thing that makes that person very special in what they do, so don't mess that up. You got to be conscious.
What was the boxer that had one arm that was huge than the other? I'm drawing a blank because I don't follow boxing all that well or all that as much as I follow the UFC. Some heavyweight’s one arm is totally out of proportion. I think that that was his right hook or something that was a knockout. He's a legend in boxing. We got to wrap this thing up here. We are going to have to save this for another episode. I’m not being symmetrical, and you see it in some industries. Guys who detail cars, look at their body composition. It's crazy. You'll find out if they are left-handed or right-handed fast.
You'll know. You take a pitcher. When you watch what they call the layback, that external rotation component so they can use that to whip. Do I need that same amount on the left side if that's not my throwing side? No. I don't think you do. Do I need to make that person? I need to reduce this and put you back because you can only go so far back on this side. Be careful. Did you take that guy who was a starter, and now you put him into the minor leagues because you try to make him symmetrical? It's easier to make somebody worse than it is to make them better, especially at that upper echelon. You got to be careful.
Go to somebody that knows what they are doing, even if you are at the amateur level. That's the most important thing, whether it's a hunting guide or whatever it is, whatever you are trying to get into. I have talked about it. The biggest one that stands out to me is if you want to get into fly fishing or something like that, get a guy. There's so much stuff that you can learn from a couple of sessions with a guide or a personal trainer.
If they are good at their craft, they are all called teachers. I'm not in a classroom. I'm in a weight room. We teach human movement. We teach the efficiency of human movement, and we are going to stumble. Kids are going to hit growth spurts, and they are going to look bummy again, but it's fine. Be patient with the process. Challenge yourself. Have those discussions. Talk about your habits. Net positive.
Awesome, Eric. Thank you. I appreciate you coming in and making the trip up here. I know it's not the closest spot, but let's hang out outside of here too. Let's get in some bow hunts or whatever else, or go to the archery range at least or something.
I'm down. Let's start there. Thank you.
Thanks, everybody, for reading.
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Important Links
Derek Wolfe - Past episode
Luke Caudillo - Past episode
Marc Montoya - Past episode
Episode - Past episode - #054 Eric Telly - Landow Performance
Dustin Jacoby - Past episode
Jeremy Myers - Past episode
Hunter McIntyre - Past episode
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About Eric Telly
Sports performance coach and manager at Landow Performance of Colorado. He works with a wide variety of athletes with his biggest population of athletes coming from the UFC Professional Fighters & the MMA community. Eric is also a Navy veteran who served 5 years in active duty and then in the Naval Reserve while attending College. Although not a native of Colorado, Eric attended middle school, high school, and college in Colorado expanding his career in sports science & high-level athletic training. Tune in as Eric Telly joins Bobby Marshall in studio to discuss strength training, strength & conditioning, social media, family, Colorado, archery, outdoor life, and much more.