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116: Coaching Strength, Building Character with James Lederach, MS, CSCS
648 Plays16 hours ago
In this episode of the Movement Logic Podcast, Laurel Beversdorf talks with strength coach James Lederach, MS, CSCS, about the deeper side of coaching and how helping someone get stronger often means helping them grow as a person. Together, they explore the benefits of strength development for adults and kids, training that supports rather than interferes with sport, the downsides of early sport specialization in youth, and the broader life lessons that strength training offers beyond physical health and performance.
James and Laurel reflect on how training develops resilience, self-reliance, and emotional steadiness for both kids and adults. They discuss how good coaching balances structure with empathy, how strength training teaches self-trust, and why the most meaningful outcomes of training have less to do with performance and more to do with who we become through the process.
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RESOURCES
Bell, 2018; PMID: 30135085
DiFiori, 2014; PMID: 24463910
Post, 2017; PMID: 28288281
Post, 2016; PMID: 27807260
VISIT James Lederach's Gym Heavy Athletics
FOLLOW @james_lederach on Instagram
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Transcript
Introduction and Philosophy of Movement Logic
00:00:00
Speaker
I'm Laurel Biebersdorf, strength and conditioning coach. And I'm Dr. Sarah Court, physical therapist. With over 30 years of combined experience in fitness, movement, and physical therapy, we believe in strong opinions loosely held. Which means we're not here to hype outdated movement concepts.
00:00:15
Speaker
or to gatekeep or fearmonger strength training for women. For too long, women have been sidelined in strength training. Oh, you mean handed pink dumbbells and told to sculpt? Whatever that means, we're here to change that with tools, evidence, and ideas that center women's needs and voices.
00:00:32
Speaker
Let's dive in.
Special Offer on Movement Logic Tutorials
00:00:49
Speaker
Hey everybody, Laurel here, coming to you with a very special interview with a very special guest. Before we get into it, a quick note, we have something exciting to tell you about, which is that right now at MovementLogic HQ, Sarah and I are running a site-wide sale on all of our tutorials.
00:01:14
Speaker
Yes, there was a time, long, long time ago, that we made tutorials. So quick backstory, when Sarah and I first met, we were working with Trina Altman, a Pilates teacher, and the three of us decided to create Movement Logic in 2017.
00:01:31
Speaker
As me, a yoga teacher, Sarah, a physical therapist, and then Trina, a Pilates teacher, we were sort of frustrated with how much continuing education for movement teachers was filled with a lot of rules and a lot of fluff, basically, and was really lacking in the type of substance that would help teachers be able to make decisions, think critically on the spot, to be able to help their students who were, for example, in pain and looking for that teacher
00:02:02
Speaker
for guidance about how to be able to continue the practice with appropriate regressions, modifications, or just knowing when to refer out to a clinician. So we created movement logic tutorials and these two to five hour continuing education resources include anatomy, biomechanics, and pain science, and then a whole bunch of exercises that you can use with your students, with your clients.
00:02:32
Speaker
And each tutorial of the six we have covers a different area of the body. low back, pelvic floor, shoulders, feet and ankles, hips and SI joints, and the neck.
00:02:46
Speaker
We collaborated with other teachers, Anula Myberg, a Pilates teacher, Jaisal Parikh, a yoga teacher. And right now we're running a site-wide sale on all of these tutorials.
00:03:00
Speaker
Typically, we only run this sale once a year. between Black Friday and Cyber Monday, of course, when everybody and their grandmother is running a sale, we decided that we're opening the cart now and we're gonna only let you podcast listeners know about it.
00:03:17
Speaker
The sale runs through Monday, December 2nd. We're giving you a heads up now. You can find all the details linked in the show notes. Okay.
00:03:27
Speaker
Now on to today's conversation.
Meet James Lederach: Influencer and Coach
00:03:30
Speaker
My guest is James Lederach. James was my personal trainer. A few years ago, we worked together remotely for over a year.
00:03:39
Speaker
He wrote all my programming and i learned a ton from him during that time about exercise prescription, about programming, and about coaching.
00:03:50
Speaker
James worked with me completely online. The work I did with James informed so much of my personal training now as well as my own personal work with strength. I learned a lot by working with him.
00:04:05
Speaker
And I firmly believe that the best way to learn how to be a personal trainer is to hire a personal trainer. James really impressed me with his knowledge online, so I hired him to be my personal trainer. We worked together for a year, and I'm just really excited to share the conversation we had today because it's not very often that I get to sit down and talk to a fellow personal trainer.
00:04:30
Speaker
and to talk shop. And so a little bit about James. James is the owner of Heavy Athletics, a gym in Pittsburgh where he coaches both youth and adult athletes in person. He has an interesting backstory, started off as a high school teacher and then realized he had two passions, teaching and training.
00:04:46
Speaker
and he figured out a way to make those the same career. In this episode, we dig into questions like, what's the difference between coaching kids versus adults?
00:04:57
Speaker
How can strength training help young athletes, not just physically, but in developing confidence, discipline, and resilience? We talk about how strength training can complement, not compete with, an athlete's sport.
Benefits of Strength Training for Performance
00:05:11
Speaker
Of course, we talk about running. And then what's the truth about early sports specialization? Does focusing on one sport from a young age help prepare young athletes for a future in athletics?
00:05:24
Speaker
Or is it actually counterproductive? Can it actually lead to harm? This is a great conversation if you're into strength training, if you're a personal trainer, if you have kids, if you know a kid that you care about who is a young athlete.
00:05:40
Speaker
I think you're going to love this conversation. It was such a treat for me to get to talk coach to coach with James. So without further ado, here's my conversation with James Lederach.
00:05:54
Speaker
James, thank you so much for joining us, for joining me, your former client, personal client on the Movement Logic podcast. I'm really excited to talk to you today. i've been following you online for many years and you actually worked with me on remote personal training, right? So listeners, that's when basically James did all my programming for over a year. We're never in the same space together. i learned a ton from James and I know following him on Social medias, he says he doesn't post a lot, but when he does, there's a lot there. So I recommend you follow him social medias. We'll link that in the show notes. But James, welcome. And tell us about
Coaching Youth vs. Adults: Methods and Approaches
00:06:34
Speaker
yourself.
00:06:35
Speaker
You also have a gym in Pittsburgh. You work with adults and the youth. yeah And you're a trainer who works with athletes. So tell us a little bit about how you got started as a trainer, about your gym, and who you work with.
00:06:50
Speaker
Sure. Thanks for having me. I've been looking forward to this conversation since we first discussed the possibility in August. And I also want to add that I really enjoyed our time working together remotely. So that was a lot of fun. and And thank you for trusting me during that time to be your coach. In terms of my background, that's a good question. I don't really know how far back to go.
00:07:11
Speaker
So I'll start at the beginning. The most logical place to start is that I became very interested in fitness when I was 11 years old. It was the summer before i entered sixth grade.
00:07:21
Speaker
And from that moment on, my passion for fitness just grew and grew. it yeah And it was always the most important thing in my life, to a fault in some cases. I made most decisions based on how it would affect my training schedule and fitness and things like that as I was growing. Yeah, I mean...
00:07:39
Speaker
a when you're When you're a kid, you don't really see the bigger picture all the time ever. So I went to college and i basically chose a school where I wanted to play football and didn't know what I wanted to do for a living.
00:07:54
Speaker
And there was always this question in the back of my mind about whether or not I would be able to monetize my passion for health and fitness. You know, i was aware of this field called strength and conditioning.
00:08:08
Speaker
I had a strength and conditioning coach in college. He was a really good person. I really liked him. But I spoke with him about it one time and he wasn't super encouraging. And so I just I forgot the idea altogether. And I ultimately stayed in a graduate program,
00:08:25
Speaker
to become a teacher. And that's where things start to take shape. So I stayed for two years studying to be a teacher, and I took a job at a prep school in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. and What did you teach?
00:08:38
Speaker
So by trade, I was a history teacher, secondary social studies. I ended up teaching theology, Catholic theology at Yeah, at Central Catholic High School in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the reason I was even able to do that was because I studied theology as a second major in undergraduate. I didn't plan to do anything with the theology major. I was just interested in it. And I said, hey, you know what?
00:09:01
Speaker
I need to fulfill
Avoiding Early Sports Specialization
00:09:02
Speaker
these credits to graduate regardless. So I might as well focus my education in some direction that I find fun and interesting. There were no good history jobs available in Pennsylvania at the time, but Central Catholic High School in Pittsburgh is a prestigious institution. They needed a religion teacher. So I was qualified and I took the job.
00:09:23
Speaker
About halfway through the year, i start working in the weight room as a volunteer strength coach with the football team. And this is actually the winningest high school football program in Pennsylvania. So was an excellent team. They were, yeah, they were very good at the time. They're still very good.
00:09:38
Speaker
And over the course of a few months, I saw everything that I loved about teaching in a classroom converge with fitness. And i learned a little bit more and I realized there were at least a few people out there who were making ah decent living in strength and conditioning.
00:09:58
Speaker
Especially in a larger city like Pittsburgh, right? Where there's going to be lots of teams, lots of athletes, and people, may maybe most importantly, with the money to invest in that extra service
Managing Strength Training for Athletes
00:10:13
Speaker
for their kids, right?
00:10:14
Speaker
Yep, absolutely. So there were a lot of potential opportunities from what I could see. I took the leap and I resigned. I passed the CSCS exam and I was very blessed to land an excellent first job. I worked for a local healthcare care conglomerate called UPMC Sports Medicine and I was you based in the Pittsburgh Penguins practice facility. So I just dropped land into the world of hockey strength and conditioning. My mentor, his name is Lorne Goldenberg and he was a really big influence on me early on. We were affiliated with the Penguins so we mainly trained their youth hockey teams and then we did work with the Penguins on occasion in an auxiliary role so we would help them run
00:10:58
Speaker
assessments and workouts while they were in camp. We would help to evaluate prospects before ah developmental camp, things like that. It was very much an occasional ancillary role. I don't want any anyone to think you're a trainer to the stars. yeah i've had some really cool experiences, but they were limited.
00:11:17
Speaker
But you were working with the pipeline, basically, which i my understanding of hockey, because believe it or not, I'm in Huntsville, Alabama. Hockey is huge here. It's one of the hottest states in the country and hockey is huge.
00:11:27
Speaker
And there's a pipeline. The kids start at special high schools sometimes, like private schools yeah that are focused on hockey and they get moved through to playing at higher levels. There's no pro team here yet, but it's pretty amazing. I think it's like that in the South with football as well.
00:11:45
Speaker
I have a couple of follow-up questions for you. So I'm really curious to know when you were 11 and you got into fitness, what specifically about fitness were you into? Is it the strength training side of it? Was the cardio endurance side of it?
00:11:58
Speaker
Was it sports? What brought you to fitness at that young age? That's a good question. have to really think back. I was a heavier kid. I was a heavier kid and in youth football, there were weight restrictions. It's for safety reasons. You can't have a boy who's 150 pounds playing against a boy who's 70 pounds because there's such a large gap between athletes at those ages.
00:12:20
Speaker
And if you didn't make weight for your age group, you had to play up in in the next age group, right? So if you didn't make weight for it. And so for a couple of years, I was having difficulty making weight like all the other linemen on my team. We were out there running sprints with with like a garbage bag wrapped around us the day of weigh-ins just so that we could play later that afternoon. And I remember the summer before sixth grade,
00:12:47
Speaker
I have no idea what clicked, but I just realized that I was too heavy and I was tired of that process. Over the last couple of years, I'd grown tired of it. And I said, I'm going to lose some weight this summer.
00:12:59
Speaker
And that's what I did. i just started eating less and running. That was it. So running. Okay. Interesting. You were obviously working on your fitness and football, but the running was the thing that you've decided to go in on.
00:13:11
Speaker
Yeah, and I actually ended up becoming a runner for several years and I was a very capable runner at that age. And then i ran into high school. So when I entered high school, I was a distance runner.
00:13:22
Speaker
And yeah, and I had dabbled with strength training. So by the time I was 14, had been exercising regularly for three years at that point. And I had messed around with weights on and off, but I wasn't super interested in it. And I also had no idea what to do. And then, yeah. And then I started strength training when I was a freshman in high school okay to support my running.
00:13:44
Speaker
The running. So I was going to swear you were going to say something about the weight room to be a lineman in football, but actually you were weight training to support your running. Can I ask you how old you are? Currently? 34. You're 34.
00:13:56
Speaker
you're thirty four Okay. You're actually older than I thought. I think you sometimes jokingly lie on social media about your age, which is hilarious. I do. One time you made a post about, it's great to be 29, and it was like just like a couple months ago. So I was like, James is 29? Oh, he's like younger than I thought. I guess I feel i feel like I'm 10 years younger. a Part of me feels like I'm still...
00:14:19
Speaker
I'm asking you about your age only because it seems to me that the times are changing with regards to people's idea about the benefits of strength training, specifically with running. Like, I think it's been known for a long time that footballers, people who play football should strength train, right? Yeah. Especially the ones who want to be bigger.
00:14:37
Speaker
But for running, it it's still a thing I notice here in the community where people will decide that they shouldn't strength train as runners or recreational runners, right? because it's going to interfere with their sport.
00:14:49
Speaker
And so it's cool to hear that back when you were in your freshman year high school, it was already known that running and strength training were not incompatible. And actually they were very complimentary.
00:15:04
Speaker
So that's surprising to me, actually. I didn't come to that realization on my own. Two of my older teammates in cross country, Kevin and my friend Chris, who who passed when I was a sophomore,
00:15:17
Speaker
They would give me a hard time in the off season. They were juniors and very good friends with my sister. And they would give me a hard time in the off season because all I would do was run. I just ran. i would go into the weight room after school and I'd hop on the treadmill and I'd run four or five miles.
00:15:33
Speaker
And they focused primarily on strength training. Now, I would argue just like looking back at the situation that they should have balanced the two more. if they want they i don't think they were running very much. They just wanted to lift weights.
00:15:48
Speaker
Were they lifting weights to support their running or to support their physique? That's a good question. I'm not really sure what their goal was, but I do remember them giving me a hard time about the fact that I wasn't strength training.
00:16:00
Speaker
And that actually made me more interested in it. And so when I started, i was mainly training at the local YMCA and all I did Laurel was I did a circuit of pin loaded machines.
00:16:13
Speaker
I would do like a full body workout. I was going every other day. So it ended up being like three or four days a week. It was like three sets of 15 on everything. That's all I did. And my body responded very well to it without making any dietary changes. i gained a few good pounds, like five to seven healthy pounds. And I noticed i felt a lot stronger in my runs. I was getting faster.
00:16:37
Speaker
And then things really transformed going into my sophomore year when i was having some difficulty running. And I have some ideas why. I was having like this really unusual knee pain that was it was specific to running. I would run for just a few minutes and my knees would light up. But there was no other activity, not a sport, not a strength training exercise that was provocative.
00:16:59
Speaker
But I just could not run. And I think that i didn't really prepare that that summer. I know that for a fact. Running too much or too fast, too soon. I think it was improper workload management, but I sat that cross country season out in 10th grade, but I needed a goal and I was becoming more and more interested in resistance training.
00:17:21
Speaker
And I remember walking up to, this is like one of a few important junctures in my teenage life as a gym bro. I walked up to this fella in the YMCA who was really big and strong. His name is John Mondo. And he would reverse grip bench 365 pounds for sets five and six, like really yeah big, strong guy.
00:17:41
Speaker
And I just walked up to him and I said, Hey, you're a really big guy. How do I get bigger? Like putting full faith, in just this random person in the gym. um I remember him asking me how many reps I was doing per set, like on everything. just like, how many reps you do per set?
00:17:58
Speaker
I said 15. And he goes, you need to be doing eight reps. And but I started doing sets of eight on everything, which seemed to have Some sort of effect, although I think that's dubious.
00:18:13
Speaker
Hypertrophy can happen across a wide spectrum of... We talk about that a lot, yeah. Yeah. it seemed It's like correlation versus causation. i definitely was growing, but I also think I was training more, i was eating more.
00:18:26
Speaker
And in any event, throughout my sophomore year, I started putting on size and I really liked it. And I eventually was way too big to run.
00:18:37
Speaker
And then I eventually became a football player again. and so that yeah That's yeah, that's how I started. So you were a little overweight as a kid. You started running, you lost a bunch of weight, you became a runner yeah and you injured yourself as a runner. You started strength training, gained a lot of muscles.
00:18:51
Speaker
Yeah, I went in it went the other way. Back to football, right? Yeah, yeah it's really it's interesting looking back at it. but yeah And then in college, I was lifting weights to facilitate better performance on the football field.
00:19:04
Speaker
But then i realized very quickly when I was a sophomore that I wasn't really that interested in football. I was more interested in strength training. Like every football team.
00:19:16
Speaker
Yeah, strength training is a big part of football culture. And friend of mine, he played for the Steelers for quite a while. And we were talking about this one time but when I opened my gym, I guess it'd be like seven years ago.
00:19:29
Speaker
And he said, there's always one or two guys on every football team who they're not lifting weights to play football. They're playing football to lift.
00:19:40
Speaker
but Does that make sense? It does. And that's who I was. Actually, the the education for how to lift weights was in the football programs because As a volleyball player in senior year, my coach finally sent us all into the weight room and it was full of football players and they all were doing circuits. They knew what they were doing. And we went in and we were like, I've got no idea.
00:20:03
Speaker
what I'm supposed to be doing in here. And our coach couldn't give us any instruction because she didn't know. She just knew that things happened in the weight room that were good for sport. And I think she went to a conference or something about it. And she was like, just go in there. And we just ended up like flirting with the guys and like did some leg presses and I might've lifted away a weight couple times. And then we ended up, unfortunately, with the fives doing rotator cuff exercises, you know, but I think ultimately though, it was good though, because that was my first, that was my first,
00:20:32
Speaker
taste of strength training and I noticed that my body composition changed really quickly kind of like yours and I was like I've got like quads now I like this right and that stuck with me it stuck with me and so I got a taste of it and then I kept doing it later on in life and if in it just kind of fuck around and find out style. And then eventually hired professionals to help me do it. But like you yourself, but anyway, sorry to interrupt. Like football is where for the longest time. So that's when you told me you were strength training for running that I was like, really, when you're 34, you're not that young. No offense. Like back then it was really still kind of all about footballers and strength training. I thought, so you're saying people play football so that they can strength. Well, small minority of them do even is as ingrained as strength training culture is.
00:21:18
Speaker
in that sport, the majority of ballplayers, I think still view the weight room as a necessary evil. But then you have, you have like one or two guys on every single team who they, they like lifting weights more than they like playing football and playing football almost just gives them direction, gives their training direction.
00:21:39
Speaker
And so for me, i realized literally one day when I was out on, on the practice field during camp, That's what I wanted to do. I enjoyed the off season way more than I enjoyed the actual season because of the training.
00:21:53
Speaker
Also, there were some other things in the mix too. Like I'm really an individualist. I like to do my own thing. And i didn't i didn't love the rah-rah team environment. I wanted to be on my own schedule and I wanted to do my own thing for a lack of a better phrase. I wanted to put more time and energy into strength training and I wanted to do it my way.
00:22:16
Speaker
and on my schedule. And that's what I did. I quit the football team. And that was one of the best decisions I ever made as a young man. And i really leaned into strength training more than ever before, became a very big, strong 20 year old.
00:22:29
Speaker
And, um and as I said, it really guided me, i think, in most cases for better, but in some cases for worse, there were some times where I think I made some silly decisions because, know, maybe avoided opportunities because of how I thought they would compromise my ability to train. but um I mean, people avoid opportunities because they're addicted to drugs too. That's true. I'd rather be addicted to strange drugs. Yeah, that's true. So like looking looking back on it, while I wouldn't generalize my approach and apply it to other people, I can say that have a very good life because of those decisions and i don't regret them. i just I don't know if I would tell somebody else to do the same thing.
00:23:14
Speaker
I think sometimes as a coach, it's good to have seen the the dark the dark side. Not that your obsession with strength training was necessarily a dark side, because there's definitely some bright sides and a lot of lot of sides, right? But like it's helpful when, for example, you have like a personality trait that you know is counterproductive for certain type of athletic performance pursuits you have.
00:23:35
Speaker
a bad habit, right? That is counterproductive for certain types of athletic performance pursuits. And you've kind of lived that. And then when you, you can spot those people when they come to you, you're like, you're, you're kind of like me. You you don't necessarily are have the job of changing them or like showing them the light, but you at least can empathize with them on a much deeper level because you're like, I kind of get where that's coming from in you. And I think the way I would summarize it, I would say, well,
00:24:03
Speaker
it may have worked out for me. i don't know if that same approach would necessarily work out for you. yeah you know Exactly. Exactly. So let's shift the conversation now to talk about working with adults and kids. And I would like to hear what the difference is because you actually work with both populations. And I know many of my listeners, they've started training, strength training, um and and also doing conditioning as adults.
00:24:29
Speaker
this is a largely female listenership. And many of them are, you know, my age, older, a little bit younger. So in the 40s to 70s, actually, um we as women weren't raised with the sociocultural norm of strength training, certainly.
00:24:47
Speaker
um And so I know that that's the case. But many of these listeners also have kids or have kids they care about, know kids they care about. And they'd like to see those kids develop good habits early on with exercise. So your specialty is actually training athletes, but actually you train non-athlete adults. And so I would love to know when you, when you boil it down, right.
00:25:07
Speaker
um How, how is it different working with the kids you work with and tell us who those kids are, like their age and what they're into. And then how is it different than working with the adults you work with?
00:25:18
Speaker
um And maybe the practical takeaway of like, how do you adjust your coaching based on that? and That's, that's a, it's an interesting question. um Historically, youth athletes, student athletes have been my biggest demographic.
00:25:34
Speaker
um and Like, interestingly enough, this fall, I'm sort of on this athlete deload um where the bulk of my clientele at, at this time is adults and fitness clients.
00:25:48
Speaker
And there are some practical, you know, business reasons for for that shift, but I have for the last almost 10 years worked mainly with student athletes. And even though it's becoming a smaller part of what I do, it is definitely my favorite thing to do. I enjoy it the most.
00:26:07
Speaker
There are differences between training adults and youth. However, I don't think the main differences lie in technical, like in the technical aspects of strength and conditioning. That is like the way you assess program and then manage programming over time.
00:26:28
Speaker
If that makes sense. I really think that the differences from what I can see, and I have a lot of data, I've trained a lot of people I've worked alone for most of my career and The differences lie in how you coach and how you relate to those populations. So with adults, adults are really more like equals, right?
00:26:50
Speaker
You know what I mean? um In fact, the the median age of my adult clientele is probably 45-ish, you know, without actually calculating it. Most of these folks are older than me. Actually, almost all of them are older than me.
00:27:05
Speaker
And so i relate to somebody who is... older than me and more experienced and who has done really impressive things in their lives. I relate to that person. I interact with them differently than I interact with a child.
00:27:19
Speaker
So with adults, again, it's it's more of a collaboration. It's like a partnership. And in some ways it becomes a friendship. You really, you spend a lot of time with these. I spend a lot of time with these people.
00:27:30
Speaker
I really get to know them. I get to know their lives and what makes them tick. With kids is... more of an authoritative relationship. And yeah i that probably has a negative connotation, but... Well, it's not an authoritarian, really. Yeah, say that's a trick that's a good point.
00:27:50
Speaker
I've read a few parenting books, and there's a there's a distinction made amongst the people who teach parents how to parent between authoritative parenting, which is actually considered, they like by some people's standards, the optimal way to parent, which is the kid's going to know where the boundaries are, and the kid's going to know when they've broken the boundaries, right?
00:28:10
Speaker
But there isn't this stealing of agency from the child as in like, I am the end all be all what I say goes, you don't have a voice. That's authoritarian. Authoritative parenting is like firm, but empathetic. And so it balances those two like hard and soft.
00:28:28
Speaker
Exactly. I'm glad that my instincts pushed me towards the right term terminology there. So that's what I would say. I would say it's authoritative because kids need structure.
00:28:39
Speaker
They need it to develop properly. if you would watch me interact with youth athletes, you would see me give them more directions, right? And I do it in a calm, soft-spoken, but firm way. And I make my expectations very clear.
00:28:57
Speaker
But in practice, it's like telling them to put things away around the gym. It's quizzing them about their rep range and their tempo and their RPE before they do a set. So, for example, when an athlete approaches barbell or whatever implement he's using, I'll stop him sometimes or her and I'll say, how many reps are you supposed to be doing?
00:29:18
Speaker
And they usually know the answer to that question. Then I'll say, what's your tempo? And they often do not know the answer to that question. And then I'll add, what's your RPE supposed to be? And they very frequently you don't know the answer to that question.
00:29:32
Speaker
And if it's all written for them on a sheet. And so I will direct them to the sheet. I'll say, go check your sheet. You need to know that before every set that you do. right I don't yell at them. I don't raise my voice.
00:29:43
Speaker
But it's things like that. It's providing directions and reminders to establish the adult child relationship that makes things operate more smoothly in the gym.
00:29:56
Speaker
It's also good for their development as people, like they need to learn how to take direction and they're accustomed to it. These kids, they are subordinates everywhere else in life, when they're at home, when they're at school.
00:30:07
Speaker
So it's not this foreign concept to them. They all do very well with it. So I try to walk that middle road, but I balance it you know, with the kids, I balance that authoritativeness with, you know, as you said, the empathy.
00:30:21
Speaker
I try to show my human side as much as I can with jokes and stories and anecdotes and things like that. I don't think that being an authority figure and having children respect you and in some ways fear you. Like, I mean, I think there's a healthy level of fear, right? Like fearing consequences and things.
00:30:42
Speaker
I don't think that is mutually exclusive to them also really liking you. Let me rephrase that. I think that they can respect you in an appropriate way, but I also think that you can be one of their favorite people at the exact same time.
00:31:01
Speaker
And that's the balance. That's the balance. And I think that those two, those two things are complimentary to one another. If they really like you, but also respect you, I think you're going to get better results than if you just had one or the other.
00:31:13
Speaker
So that's really the main difference, broadly speaking, between adults. The authoritativeness is not necessary with adults. it's was You don't need to be that way. They know how to operate.
00:31:24
Speaker
But yeah I also don't think it would be well received, especially from somebody who is younger. that You know, that's that's what I'm thinking, right? So I was thinking about the way that you approach teaching the kids, which it sounds very much like an educational stance you're taking with regards to asking them, like, how many reps supposed to be doing?
00:31:42
Speaker
What's your tempo? What's your RPE? you You should know this. You're basically setting an expectation. Like, i I think you should know this because you've had the material and you've had a chance to look at it and you've been doing this with me already, right?
00:31:54
Speaker
It's a little bit of like an impromptu quiz or test, as you said. And I don't know that that wouldn't be a good thing for adults, actually. i think it would be a great thing. I think that adults benefit from coaching that also um has boundaries around it, where there's also some expectations that that I expect you to learn actually learn this, right? And I'm not just here to coach you. I'm actually here to teach you how to do this, how to how to maybe be able to do this without me, right? So that I'm giving you the fishing pole instead of just the fish I think it's really the manner in which you're doing it, which is that you use the word subordinate or use the word authoritative, right?
00:32:30
Speaker
I think that's where you wouldn't want to have that coming through with an adult because it would feel really condescending or would feel really patronizing or would feel really like, why is he such an asshole? She's such a jerk to me, you know, but I do think that there's a way maybe to,
00:32:46
Speaker
um to like if you were teaching a friend basically relate to the adult like a friend but continue to educate right um because friends have a lot to teach each other and it might be like ah a bit more of a didactic way of teaching it but it's still probably more effective than just assuming they know because let me tell you a lot of adults don't know what they're doing and they've been doing it for a while and they still don't know what they're doing yeah right you're like what's the rep range oh i don't know are you even writing this down uh no he's like well Let's get with the program here because this is a program, right? This isn't just popping into a yoga class or popping into a class class. We need to know what you did last week so that we can build from there um and the week before that and the week before that. But yeah, I think that it's the affect, perhaps, the affect with which you you interact with the with with the with the person, if it's a younger person versus an adult. I wholeheartedly agree with that in
00:33:37
Speaker
my My instincts tell me that you're correct. I will admit that I don't have a lot of experience training adults in groups. I'm gaining some right now, and I'll tell you about that here in a second. But for actually my entire career, just until a month ago, adult training has been private one-on-one personal training. So i'm I'm doing everything for them, right? I hold the document on which training is written and i load the bars. i do all of that for them.
00:34:06
Speaker
With the kids, it's different because they are training in groups, but on distinct programs. It's important. They need to follow along. Yeah. One of the reasons that I was thinking that adults might not respond as well as the kids to those directions is because I i have formed a corporate wellness partnership this fall with a nearby business, literally right across the parking lot. And I'm training 32 their employees,
00:34:36
Speaker
in groups, but it's generalized training. And i notice, and i approach them in a similar way to the way I approach the kids, like with less authoritativeness.
00:34:49
Speaker
I do notice, and they're all older than me. They're all older than me. I noticed that whenever I get into instruction, some of them get really self-conscious about it. And it does seem as though they maybe are a little embarrassed around their peers.
00:35:03
Speaker
And the kids aren't like that. The kids are really, they're really durable. They're really durable. And I just, the only hypothesis I've been able to form, and I alluded to it earlier, is that kids are subordinate everywhere in life and adults just, they just are not. These are actually, these are teachers. So they are authority figures. They have classrooms. They are all parents. They have children. And I noticed that they just don't respond the same. Are their responses bad or the negative?
00:35:33
Speaker
No, but I think that I pick up on a little bit of self-consciousness whenever i and instruct. So I try not to dwell on things with them when it comes to technique and tempo and whatever else I'm trying to remediate.
00:35:46
Speaker
i get it to good enough because I don't want to be, i don't want to be writing this person's case oh over and over and over and over, especially in front of their their colleagues. Yeah, I think that that is ah really,
00:36:00
Speaker
i think very astute observation about adults and how the concerns of adults and their social standing is different than the concerns of children and their social standing, especially when there's an adult in charge, right? Like it's very clear that the adult is in charge, but when it's a group of adults and you're the younger one, right?
00:36:18
Speaker
And you come in and you're in your and you're telling them all what to do. And if there's any indication that like somebody is maybe not like with the program or whatever, like there can be this public shame feeling or this feeling of embarrassment or this feeling of like,
00:36:31
Speaker
I don't think this is anything anyone's like thinking through in the moment, but like the threat to their social standing that feels like a, like a, um you know, a real threat. So it can be and inconducive to and enjoying exercise. I think like you're being tested or quiz.
00:36:47
Speaker
The other thing too, is like these adults have jobs and are busy and have kids and have a million things that they're thinking about. And the kids come in and they might have some things going on, but they don't have like the many layered sort of laundry list of responsibilities that adults have that, you know, frankly, adults just don't have necessarily the mental or physical energy to be as committed no as you know, they would maybe benefit from being to exercise. And like you said, you got to let that shit go because let's be honest, like most people aren't exercising at all. So the ones that have shown up for your group fitness at the corporate, you know,
00:37:22
Speaker
gathering, like they're taking a step that very, actually very few adults even take. So bravo to that, right? Yeah. And I don't want to create additional barriers. I understand that just them attending to workouts per week is, it's challenging enough for them logistically psychologically and physically, right? Again, like when I'm coaching them, especially, i get things too good enough. That probably sounds bad, but you know what my, I mean, you've followed my work for long enough. you Yeah, you were so ah tolerant of my inconsistency, my flakiness. You know what my standards are for execution in exercise.
00:38:00
Speaker
So yeah yeah it's not like you would walk into one of these group training situations and see just absolute Chaos. That's not it. everything Everything is pretty good. But with the kids, I find that I am able to coach to a higher standard just because of the dynamics. Although, again, I'll caveat by saying that this is a new endeavor for me that I am just learning how to navigate, you know.
00:38:25
Speaker
Yeah. Well, it'll be interesting to see how your your observations evolve as you continue doing it But I will also say that the kids you're working with are predominantly athletes, right? yeah So they're also ah motivated on a different level than the adults. They may be doing your program for ah health benefits, which is a more generalized goal that ah doesn't require so maybe a high level of discipline or there's just not a culture of discipline, but there is around athletes. And There's this driven sort of disciplined approach to that, that those kids have been conditioned into because they're athletes, right? They're in a part of sports where it's probably in Pittsburgh, you know, pretty competitive and they're probably playing at a pretty high level. You're right. You're a hundred percent right. But isn't that backwards? Doesn't that show you, doesn't that show us how our priorities as a society are misplaced in a lot of ways, but here specifically,
00:39:16
Speaker
It does seem the sports performance is like a more important goal or outcome than just overall health for people. yeah mean And I would argue very passionately that health is the ultimate goal. And actually when training athletes, that's my ultimate goal for them. And I'm more and more candid about that with parents as I get older.
00:39:43
Speaker
yeah And that's something that we can touch on at some point, maybe. But yeah, I just think, I think that's, it's, it's sad. Actually, sports are on a pedestal that they don't, they don't belong on.
00:39:55
Speaker
We are going to talk a little bit more about that. So when you talk about your athletes, when you post about your athletes on social media, it's really clear to me that you care way more about them as people than about their performance stats or their lifting stats.
00:40:10
Speaker
And so I'm wondering what, drives you to help these kids? What do you see as the biggest benefit of strength training for them physically, mentally, and socially? Well, think that the physical benefits are obvious.
00:40:23
Speaker
I think that everyone is at least somewhat ah aware of the positive changes that occur in our bodies, both structurally and physiologically, when we not just strength train, but exercise in general.
00:40:38
Speaker
I think that one unique consideration, and I guess as an aside that I find interesting, there's really not much research in children that shows structural changes in response to resistance training. And that's because of ethical concerns. So methods methods, muscle biopsies, as an example, are pretty invasive. So it's not something that is easy or even considered ethical to study. So we infer.
00:41:08
Speaker
structural adaptations in populations that that are under 18 years old. So we infer the adaptations because we see performance benefits, improve functional outcomes, and we extrapolate from research on adults. But the one structural change that I did want to highlight is improvements in bone mineral density. And I think you mentioned on the term that you used on a recent podcast was Bone Bank.
00:41:38
Speaker
I think I heard you say that. Oh, I didn't know you listened to the podcast, Jason. Yeah, I catch an episode or two every now and then. But so there is this idea, and it's correct, that the earlier you can start improving your bone mineral density, the better, because your window in life is somewhat limited, right? So yeah Bone mineral formation, what is it? It goes on until about 18 years old. And then from 18 35, you have this like what they call consolidation phase where the bones are hardening.
00:42:08
Speaker
And then after that, you slowly lose it over time, although that loss can be mitigated with resistance training and lifestyle habits that lead to good health and so on and so forth. Childhood and adolescence is really, it's a good time to get started.
00:42:22
Speaker
There's an idea or seems to be an idea that Children's bodies might be uniquely responsive. And there is evidence showing that when children undergo resistance training, they do improve bone mineral density or increase bone mineral density more than their peers who are not resistance training, although the the margins are small. But there is this idea that maybe children's bones are more sensitive to resistance training, although I don't think that that's true. And that's not what I see. That's not how i interpret the data in this area. It actually seems like while their bodies do respond, i think it seems like it's a bit less sensitive. And if you think about it, that cellular machinery that is that is laying down new bone, it's already operating in overdrive. yeah So it's not going to be quite as sensitive as somebody whose body is past that stage.
00:43:18
Speaker
But I think that the earlier you can start making deposits into that bone bank, the better, right? So even though the relative increases might be smaller than somebody who's 20, you are still increasing your time under the curve, so to speak. Like you are just developing bone mass for longer and that will lead to just larger absolute values in one's life. So I think that's a really important physical and structural outcome.
00:43:52
Speaker
Again, i think that the performance benefits, the functional benefits are, i think that they're pretty intuitive. Yeah. its Also a social benefit specifically for girls, I know, who do athletics, who play sports.
00:44:06
Speaker
And this might be because of the environment of the team and the sport itself or the way that those social benefits and the physical benefits and the exercise all kind of work together that it's less likely that girls will suffer from poor self-esteem maybe and then the host of like negative outcomes that can come from that if they're involved in sports and I think that while string training isn't the same thing as being involved in a sport I think there's something to and this is me just popping off about it but there's something to
00:44:39
Speaker
really highlighting and prioritizing in children's minds what they can do physically and being embodied and using their bodies to do hard things that can be a real boost to their self-esteem, right? And and instead of getting sucked into social media, sucked into um maybe negative social interactions, relationships, cliques, bullying, things like that, to really move their attention more to embodiment and
00:45:10
Speaker
physical capability and working on that. And so that that is something that I'm not well versed in at all, but have heard along the way. that and And I know it was true for me. I was involved in sports from fifth grade through senior year.
00:45:25
Speaker
And I had peers who were not. And it's not a causation situation, but I just didn't have enough. I didn't have as much time to get in trouble. I didn't have as much time to be sitting around worrying about These things were ultimately creating a negative feeling in my mind or my body. I was working on getting better at volleyball. I was working on getting better at track. was on the bus with the team and we were French braiding each other's hair and going to like try to win this next game. and There's a camaraderie that's developed amongst girls in sports that I think is also creates
00:45:58
Speaker
counteracts the mean girl or the queen bee energy that can so sometimes develop with girls. And this is not the same thing as saying girls should strength train for these same benefits. But think now coaching the women that I coach with Sarah in Lift for Longevity, a lot of them are acknowledging anecdotally, like I am less focused now on exercising to look a certain way and much more focused on exercise for feeling better or noticing the things that I can now do that I couldn't do before. And so for their entire lives, really, they're taught to exercise to look a certain way, right? And they're taught that and the reason that they should exercise as women is to appear attractive by society's standards.
00:46:36
Speaker
And i think what strength training can do and what involvement in youth athletics can do and for different populations, but same way is help women really tap into less about what they look like and more about what they can do.
00:46:48
Speaker
i would like to maybe touch on the things that you just said. I just wanted to really reinforce everything that you just said when we're talking about the benefits of sports, but more specifically the benefits of strength training. I think some of the largest, I think some of the largest benefits are the ones that are less obvious.
00:47:06
Speaker
And you mentioned the way it makes a person feel the way it improves self-esteem. I think that you can unpack that further. And, you know, one thing I was, yeah I've been ruminating about this conversation that we're going to, uh, that we've been planning to have for a while.
00:47:24
Speaker
And i really think that in addition to the myriad of physical and systemic health benefits that resistance training confers, there are these improvements in intrinsic characteristics. So I really see it and I know the way the ways that it's benefited me in this regard. And so I'll just use my personal experience and that's what I'm drawing from.
00:47:48
Speaker
but I think that training and sports too, but training is a bit unique. It obviously teaches somebody to work consistently towards a goal over a long period of time.
00:48:01
Speaker
Like we all know that if you want to develop an impressive physique, or if you want to be a really strong lifter, if you want to be a faster sprinter, like you can just fill in whatever goal that you prefer. It's not going to happen overnight.
00:48:14
Speaker
It's going to happen over a long expanse of time. And there are going to be ups and downs during the process. Many undulations every day is going to be a little bit different. And the training process really changes.
00:48:27
Speaker
teaches people how to, i think, approach goals. And those lessons can be applied everywhere else in life. It also, it teaches people how to endure discomforts.
00:48:43
Speaker
when you train, you you don't just endure physical discomfort, you you deal with psychological and emotional discomfort. It could be um if you're training in a group environment, you could be a little self-conscious. That could be something that's relevant here. It's also just pushing yourself in general or just showing up when you don't feel like it.
00:49:02
Speaker
um I think that there are there are a lot of potential examples in that area. One of the reasons I always really love training was because it taught me to rely on myself.
00:49:16
Speaker
And I think that strength training is unique in that regard. It's it's it's an individual enterprise. And you know while you might have somebody like me, you might have a coach, you might have a guide, like ultimately you still have to do the work. And my experience is a bit different than the athletes I train in that I'm self-taught and I figured everything out on my own. So you know I got to live this more so than they do, but they're still the ones with their hands that on the barbell. And ah think that it's an activity that shows you how to will yourself to success.
00:49:56
Speaker
You are the only variable that needs controlling. And think that's really powerful. And i think it can also teach people, especially if you're in charge of your own programming, it can teach people to look inward and ask themselves like,
00:50:12
Speaker
what can I do better? i think that's a really helpful mindset to have in life. Like when things maybe aren't going your way or aren't working the way you expect them to be able to first not blame others, even if others are at fault. I think it's very empowering to be able to start by asking yourself, what am I doing that might be causing the situation? And then what can I do to remedy it?
00:50:37
Speaker
You know I mean? Taking personal responsibility. Yes. And i I think that for youth specifically, but also just people in general, we all know that growing up is hard.
00:50:47
Speaker
Growing up is a term, but life is hard, right? It's all. We're all just growing up. Exactly. It's life's a constant work. It's a constant work in progress.
00:51:00
Speaker
And i think that training is, everyone will tell you that it's an outlet. but I really do think it's a way to channel people angst or pain or uncertainty into something that is productive. I think it's a way to take those energies and direct them towards something that's ultimately going to help you. Like i'll I'll just make up a phrase. I think that strength training, if you can harness that energy that sometimes is born out of your problems, you can use your problems for productivity, if that makes sense. What is it when you turn something into gold? What's it called? Alchemy, a form of alchemy. Yeah.
00:51:39
Speaker
I think that is the case. So this training process that we're talking about, I really think that it offers unique opportunities in all of those ways. And I think, I really believe that's what makes people feel better. In addition to the physical benefits, I think that it makes them feel like more capable people in general who are equipped to handle more challenges in life. But That's all I wanted to say on that. And I'm happy to move on to discuss injury rates and things like that. and
00:52:11
Speaker
the The more soulful topics are always, I think, enjoyable to talk about and hear about anyway. The one thing you said that made me think of my demographic that I serve is this idea that strength training teaches you how to rely on yourself.
00:52:25
Speaker
Yes. And that made me think of how lot of the women that we coach in our course and a lot of the personal training clients that I have, they are people who are always helping their kids or they're teaching their students.
00:52:43
Speaker
They're women who are involved in caretaking. And so they're always responsible for other people. And they're always in charge of or have a host of people who rely on them.
00:52:55
Speaker
that one thing I notice about a mindset shift that starts to happen, or even an obstacle or a mental block that they can run up against is this idea that when we strength train, we show up for our ourselves, we challenge ourselves, we put ourselves through these uncomfortable sets, right? And we make changes to our body through that discomfort, actually.
00:53:14
Speaker
and It is solitary. It's not solitary in our course because we all show up and train together, but it is solitary in that this is your lift. This is the weight you're putting on the bar. How many reps? the work is yours. The work is yours.
00:53:26
Speaker
And we're sharing some of the collective burden of having a place to be to do it. But ultimately, ah day after day, if you want to make a change to your strength and over that long span of time, you have to show up for yourself. You have to be accountable to yourself.
00:53:41
Speaker
And That's hard for some women because they are accountable to so many people all the time, taking care of people. And it's, I think, a shift to go this activity that I haven't engaged with my whole life, which I've taken on now, is one in which I am accountable to myself.
00:54:00
Speaker
And it can be it can be real transformative obstacle to overcome, I think, ultimately. But it can also pose a challenge, an unexpected challenge. Yeah. Absolutely. There's so many questions I want to ask you, but I've got to narrow it down now because we're coming to the end. So back to youth and training, because I know many of the people listening have kids or grandkids. yeah And there's this idea that and think more and more is becoming popular that in order to be competitive as a youth athlete, you have to start specializing.
00:54:31
Speaker
You have to start focusing on your sport and If you don't, you'll be left behind. You got to start taking it seriously from a really young age. Otherwise, the kids are just too good by the time you get older.
00:54:45
Speaker
And I see this here in Huntsville with hockey, but I also starting to see it with soccer, right? There's different ways kids can be involved in soccer, even at age six, age seven, where there's this more serious thing going on over here. And then there's this like more laid back thing going on over here.
00:55:00
Speaker
There's now indoor winter soccer and there's fall soccer outdoors. And you could probably find a way to keep her in soccer all year round. And she loves soccer. So that's the reason I'm bringing that sport up, because that's probably one she would do all year round.
00:55:13
Speaker
But I know that this is something you talk about a lot on Instagram, about how there's this urge to want to specialize because your kid's good at the sport. And you don't want your kid to be left behind.
00:55:25
Speaker
So you want them to get even better at the sport so that by the time they're older, they're better than their peers. And you caution against it. Why? There's a lot there. It's a flawed mindset. And I guess I would begin this conversation with ah like a rhetorical question.
00:55:40
Speaker
You wouldn't encourage or require a child to study just one subject in school? Would you? Like, no, we would never do that because we want to expose them to an array of disciplines and topics so that they are intellectually well-rounded that they have a diverse skill set.
00:55:57
Speaker
And sports are no different. and Yeah. And early specialization, has become more and more popular. I think that there are economic reasons for this. Youth sports are a big business. Last I read, it's like ah it's like a $15.5 billion dollar industry, but that was like six or seven years ago, so I'm sure it's grown.
00:56:16
Speaker
So there are these economic incentives for sports organizations to get more kids participating and to have them participate for longer, for more months throughout the year. So there's a lot of pressure and there are a lot of promises. There's a lot of pressure from the organizations and the coaches and there's a lot of promises made and a lot of parents and athletes buy into it. and It's tough to really, there's not any very clear statistics on how many children are specializing nowadays, but on the upper end, it seems to be more than half. And the athletes who are special yeah it's a lot in the athletes who are specializing across sports,
00:56:52
Speaker
between ages ten and twelve which is very young and when you look at elite performers across all sports that the elites with exceptions tend to not specialize. If they even do specialize, they tend to not specialize until 15 to 17 in that range.
00:57:11
Speaker
And there's, there's a ton of literature in this area and it does not, when you look at it together as a whole, it does not create a positive picture. It's a very, it's a very negative one.
00:57:26
Speaker
And yeah what does that picture look like? We can talk data here. I think it's worth mentioning that it's pretty rare that you find topics in, I think, any science really, but especially in sports science and in exercise science that are unequivocal, that are just is straightforward.
00:57:44
Speaker
Yeah, it's a pretty rare thing. This is one of those topics. It's it's unequivocal. So there have been a lot of different efforts to quantify how early specialization affects athletes. Again, none of them have shown anything positive. So I think it's good to first define specialization and like probably everyone has their own idea of what that means. But a good working definition that you see throughout the literature is greater than eight months of intense, keyword intense, participation in one sport at the expense of other sports or activities, right?
00:58:25
Speaker
And there's ah there's an author who, you if you look into this topic, an author who comes up pretty often is a there' one Eric Post. And I know Eric Post and colleagues sometime in the last decade saw that Athletes who participated in one sport for greater than eight months out of the year had the highest risk of injury yeah out of all athletes.
00:58:51
Speaker
Athletes who participated in sports in general, so that includes other sports, for greater than eight months out of the year were also at increased risk compared to their peers. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it just doesn't just apply to single sport athletes. It applies to how much sport you're participating in general. yeah And then they use their data in this particular investigation.
00:59:13
Speaker
They use their data to create these little guidelines. They saw that athletes who were participating in more hours per week than their age of sport were at increased risk. For example, if a 10-year-old was participating in more than 10 hours of practice and competition combined, he he or she is at increased risk than their peers, and then greater than 16 hours a week in general.
00:59:38
Speaker
um So the question then is how much risk, okay? To what extent is it increased? And I know that an author called David Bell, David Bell looked into this and found that it was almost Double.
00:59:56
Speaker
1.8 was the number, right? Yeah. Yep. Yeah. So if you're an athlete who falls into the categories that I just described, you're at nearly double the risk of your peers. And then I guess the next question that I would ask is what types of injuries are we seeing?
01:00:10
Speaker
And an author named who John DeFiori. And if you ever, if you want these papers, Laurel, I can send them to you. John DeFiori. Sure. saw that a little over half of injuries you're seeing in youth athletes are classified as overuse injuries, meaning they are avoidable.
01:00:28
Speaker
That is some data on how early sports specialization increases injury risk in children. And the reason for that is is is multifactorial. I don't think it's just the sport. I think it's really the way the sport fits into their lives. And I've seen that. And the reason I say that is that 12, 14 or 16 hours per week of sports preparation in other contexts is probably fine. I'd imagine that Olympians, they're probably doing more than that, but there are two important footnotes that go there. they
01:01:00
Speaker
do nothing but prepare for their sports so they have the capacity. They don't have the same competing demands that children and teenagers do. And they've also had many years to gradually build the physical capacity necessary to handle those workloads. I don't know if I would like just blame the amount of sports participation. It's the way it fits into their lives and the way it raises of stress levels and displaces sleep and so on and so forth.
01:01:26
Speaker
So... The injury rates are much higher in the specialists and the success rates are much lower. The same author I mentioned a few minutes ago, Bell, did an investigation looking at athletes at, it was the University of Wisconsin, main campus, Madison.
01:01:45
Speaker
That's big time, right? That's Big Ten. That's that's the pinnacle of collegiate athletics. They looked at you how many specialists were present across the sports offered at University of Wisconsin, and they saw that it was 16.9%. I just read, I just reviewed this like a week ago. It was approximately 16% of athletes specialized before their freshman year of high school.
01:02:09
Speaker
And 41, was 41 and change percent of athletes specialized before their senior year of high school. So. oh wow. So the majority aren't even specializing until of high school.
01:02:22
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. yeah So the majority did not specialize even as seniors in high school. That accords with my personal anecdotes and observations over the years.
01:02:33
Speaker
I have seen that athletes who put all their chips into one basket with the sport early on, they... maybe at a quote unquote elite level for a little while when they're 12 or 13, but they almost never make it, so to speak. it doesn me But also because is there a burnout aspect to it as well, or is it mostly a physical injury that puts them out? Oh man, that's a great question. It's different for, it's different for everyone. It depends on the individual and it depends on the sport, but i have seen that a lot of the specialists are
01:03:08
Speaker
undergo at least one major orthopedic surgery oh but yeah yeah before they are in ninth or 10th grade. And that's that's a hindrance to their development.
01:03:21
Speaker
But even the ones who make it through unscathed or virtually unscathed, because I do have year-round sports participants who there's there's always a little something going on with them, but that that can be said for just about everyone who's using their body on a regular basis. yeah Like the ones who make it through without anything major, they tend to not live up to the expectations that were laid out when they were 11, 12, 13. So like yeah yeah the athlete who is way ahead of his peers at a very young age from what I've seen
01:03:57
Speaker
usually underachieves in terms of where they end up in collegiate athletics. So i'm an athlete who is expected to be the next big thing in Division one you pick the sport, I find tends to, at best, they will make it to the Division II level and A lot of them end up at the Division III level, and I'm not knocking on Division III sports or Division II sports or anything like that. I'm talking about the level that they ultimately reach in comparison to the expectations that were set by their coaches and parents and peers when they were younger.
01:04:32
Speaker
And those athletes who are expected to be elites throughout their lifetime really aren't elite anything beyond eighth or ninth grade from what I can see.
01:04:45
Speaker
Yeah, hold on. My cat has a special needs geriatric kitty. He has to sit oh boy right next to me on his bed. I'm sorry. Can you still hear me now that I just clobbered them? can hear you. I haven't been able to see you in a while. Oh, okay. Oh, wow. Okay, I can see you.
01:05:00
Speaker
I have one more question for Do you have time for one more question? Yeah, do. It can be short. um So my my question is about strength training for athletes and about how I think it's common maybe amongst recreational athletes who are older, more my age,
01:05:14
Speaker
runners For example, I'm involved in the running community here that strength training will have a negative impact on sport performance. There's this common worry in the running world that strength training could slow them down or make them to sort of train.
01:05:29
Speaker
And it seems more and more research is coming out showing the opposite, that strength training supports and improves running performance. It enhances running economy and durability, to name a few benefits.
01:05:41
Speaker
So given these concerns that people have about, I'm an athlete, I don't want to strength train, it's going to make me sore, stiff, it's going to fatigue me too much. How do you talk to people who, or how would you talk to someone with this concern?
01:05:54
Speaker
And how do you train your athletes so that the strength training doesn't interfere and instead supports their sport? I know that's a huge question. So you might have to get this. There's a lot of, yeah, there's a lot of, there's a lot of technical routes that I could meander through in response.
01:06:13
Speaker
I would say first and foremost, that if the training is structured, applied and managed correctly, there should be no interference.
01:06:24
Speaker
If the dosage, the two activities, whatever, whatever sport activity, and I know you used running as an example, but whatever activities are in question should be able to coexist with one another.
01:06:35
Speaker
So unless you're getting into strength training at insanely high volumes or training like before important practices or competitions, or in this case runs,
01:06:48
Speaker
I don't expect to see an interference effect. Like athletes in order to, leverage strength training for improved performance in a sport or just some unrelated activity, the requisite dosage is actually pretty low. Like you can get away with two or three full body workouts per week and just a few relatively intense sets per exercise, like within within those workouts. So in order to experience the benefits that
01:07:21
Speaker
that non-strength athletes need and want, they don't need to be doing a whole lot. If it's interfering, the dosage is too high yeah or the training is just occurring at the wrong times. For runners, I was speaking with one of the faster runners in Huntsville and he said that he only trains upper body because he feels like it it kills his legs too much.
01:07:44
Speaker
for running. And then I've also spoken to other athletic trainers who, of course, are concerned about the perhaps increase in muscle size of someone can build a lot of muscle slowing down an endurance athlete, right? Because the heavier you are, the more mass you have to move, right? So yeah, I know that there's definitely some body composition concerns, and there's some fatigue concerns. Fatigue can be managed, obviously, but so can hypertrophy. You don't have to prescribe as much volume and you're probably not going to see as much hypertrophy. there's all Types of considerations you're making with your athletes?
01:08:18
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. In theory, yes, if running is the activity in question here, in theory, you can add too much mass to the body and you can, even with the strength improvements and the the neuromuscular improvements, you can still harm performance in that way, but you have to add a considerable amount of body mass to really have a negative effect on the limb's inertial properties, right? So like was just referring to the amount of mass that like the hip in this example has to swing.
01:08:51
Speaker
And again, like as you said, you can manage the that risk. I'll put it in quotes. i don't Nobody accidentally wakes up with too much muscle mass. It doesn't matter who they are. It's just nobody's that special. that special.
01:09:05
Speaker
But those risks can be managed very easily with dosage of training exercise selection and also with nutrition if you're not if you're not eating in a certain way like you're not eating in a way that's conducive to like large body mass increases you are not going to see large increases in body mass we have this conversation a lot but for a different reason it's for women who have been socially conditioned to not want to have muscle because they'll Yeah, it it won't they will no longer appear feminine, according to some really weird societal... Yeah, that's that's hard to achieve. thats Yeah.
01:09:41
Speaker
Yeah. oh yeah and then You're not just going to wake up with a bunch of muscle, like do a couple workouts and like, oh shit, I, you know, now I look so ripped. Crap. Like that's not how works. It's not a thing. yeah So yeah, I do. mean So I am cognizant of training that may, and again, i just think practically speaking, it's not likely to happen, but like with an athlete who is doing a lot of running or sprinting, I am cognizant of training methods that add a lot of distal leg mass, right? I don't want to add a lot of mass to the lower extremity that is far away from the hip. So I don't want a ton of weight like through the legs. That's everything below the knee. I don't want a lot of distal quad mass. If I am going to add mass to the lower extremity, a lot of mass, I want it to be as proximal as it can be, like as close to the hip and the truck. But
01:10:34
Speaker
it's It's a small consideration of mine. It's not a big consideration. And i tend to believe, and I've seen this as well, that pretty much all athletes can benefit from a little bit of hypertrophy. yeah And very few reach a point where they have exhausted the limits of increased muscle mass. like almost no Almost nobody gets there.
01:10:59
Speaker
I don't want to use too much more of your time because I know that you've had to work. Yes, I do. This has been a fantastically rich conversation, James. I really want to thank you for coming on. I know you're so...
01:11:13
Speaker
busy, but I hope this was as fun for you as it was for me. Yeah, it was kind of a great time. And this is the first of its kind. We've never actually interviewed a coach on the podcast. We've definitely never interviewed a youth coach and we've never interviewed someone and talked like a lot about sports and athletics. So I'm really excited to publish this one because I think it is it's a unique episode.
01:11:36
Speaker
Where can people, James, where can people find you? If you're in the Pittsburgh area, by the way, where can they find you? And then on social media, I know you're not as active there, but when you do post, it's gold. So where can people find you? ah So physically, I'm located north of Pittsburgh. My my address is in Swickley. If you're local, you might know it as Wexford. I'm generally in the Wexford area.
01:11:56
Speaker
On social media, you can follow me at on Instagram. That's the only social media i have at James underscore letterrock, L-E-D-E-R-A-C-H. That's my last name. I do have a website that I need to do a lot of updating to. It's heavyathletics. That's the name of my company,.co.
01:12:14
Speaker
I think that the best way to touch base with me is going to be on Instagram. So again, at James underscore letter rock. yeah i We're going to link all that in the show notes. I really appreciate you having me here, Laurel. It's a conversation I'd love to continue in the future. and i'd love to I'd love to talk to you again at some point.