“Freak of Training” | Revolutionary Speed Training (ft. Adam Archuleta)

In today’s podcast, I discuss the revolutionary speed training and development of Adam Archuleta, a formal NFL safety for the Rams, Cardinals, and Bears.

Archuleta trained with Jay Schroeder to focus on speed and performance. Archuleta dominated the combine and was selected in the first round by the Rams. His unique training vaulted him into the NFL, where he spent 7 season at safety.

Get certified by the Universal Speed Rating & start building your speed community: https://train.universalspeedrating.com/feedthecats

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Feed the Cats is a revolutionary way of training, coaching, and teaching that values specificity, essentialism, performance, and love. After gaining a world-wide following in Track & Field, FTC has now gained a foothold in American football, along with other sports.

Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you on the next one!

Here today with a a podcast with a with a guy that I feel like I’ve known for a long time I’ve only uh had a couple zooms with him so far in the last year maybe six months um but I watched him on

TV when I was a huge fan of the Rams uh back in their Glory Days and you know I only lived like 90 miles from St Louis we saw every game on TV and all that kind of stuff actually attended a couple training camps and uh and and I think

You’re you’re best known though for the video that came out called freak of training when when when you and uh uh J schroer um kind of turned the whole idea about training kind of upside down and uh uh how how did you meet Adam how did you meet Jay

Schroer yeah so it was kind of a crazy story um I’ve always since a kid since I was a kid was fascinated with a I want to get to the NFL but I always kind of knew that to do that I had to get bigger faster and stronger so I was always

Reading and and we’re talking now in the mid90s right so really before the internet um and all the information that’s out there now and and so it really I was relegated towards like muscle media and flex magazine and and that kind of stuff um so I just knew

That to get bigger faster stronger I had to train and so I was always consuming content so it was it was Christmas of my junior year in high school and I was reading one of those magazines and there was this little obscure ad in in the back for a magazine

Called powerlifting USA and I asked my dad I said hey Dad can I get this for Christmas and he’s like sure it was like 50 bucks or whatever I think there were at that time there were six issues a year and the very first issue that I got was in

January uh Jay had written an article and when I read read it I said this is different like there’s something about this guy and I was 16 at the time or 17 at the time there’s something different about this guy and I was like well I’m

GNA call him right so I just picked up the phone I called him I told him I was interested the the article was something about Advanced powerlifting and how to Peak your bench press but I just knew that he he he knew something so I called

Him and I said uh hey I read your article I want to know more about it and he saidwell you sound pretty young this is for advanced powerlifters you know you have no business doing anything like this and he said you know call this guy in Minnesota I’m in Arizona and I said

Well I’m in Arizona too and I said where you at and he his gym was like 15 minutes from where I lived and so he said come on in uh we’ll talk and so I drove over there and and we met now that’s a whole another story I don’t

Know if you want to get into my first meeting with him but that’s really how I came to meet Jay just reading stuff called him up and the rest is history and I do want to get into that Adam because I I think you’ve told me this

Story and um it was not a real positive first meeting right uh no so um so I was again I was 17 years old and and and this is I think it’s pretty important you know my parents didn’t take me my mom didn’t take me I drove myself right I think it’s really

Important when you think about kids parents coaches I took the initiative I drove out there and so imagine at that time Jay was in a 6 700 square foot little office building didn’t look like much and imagine you’re 17 years old and you drive up and and you hear this music

Coming out of this this room and it was it was like the the Russian Red Army Choir music right like Propaganda music and so you walk in and I see Jay I see a couple bigger powerlifter guys and I see another guy who who’s one of the

Greatest guys I’ve ever met um he’s no longer with us unfortunately but there was another guy who was 60 years old he was about 180 pounds and he was deadlifting like 600 pounds right and so I walk into this room and they’re working out and I’m like wow what what

Is going on here right there’s a big Russian flag on the wall there’s Russian music and um so anyways Jay he ignores me for about 45 minutes I just stand there and watch and then he finally comes over to me and it was basically him berating me

And and belittling me for the next two hours telling me that I had no chance I had no athletic shape that um I had no idea what I was doing or what I was talking about that he would train me and write me a program but I wasn’t good

Enough to train in his gym so I had to go out and do it on my own so um it was a pretty pretty pretty interesting meeting but I remember I came home late I came home about 9:00 at night and my mom said you know where have you been um

I said well I was meeting that trainer and she said how’ to go and I said well he basically cut me down for two hours and and belittled me and she goes well what do you think and I was like I think he’s the guy and so at that

Time he his price was $50 a month and I asked my mom I said hey can we afford to do this and she says yeah I’ll do it for you if you think it if you think it’s the right thing to do and so that’s how we started crazy story and and

Correct me if I’m wrong here uh with my research but you walked on at Arizona State uh as a linebacker weighing 172 and then four years later you drafted in the first round of the NFL draft weighing 211 um kind of so I walked on um they

They wanted me to play linebacker I was when I got there my freshman year I was about 190 Okay so I was about 190 and I I was there for five years and so um over the course of the next five years yeah after the first year I earned a

Scholarship and then I played special teams for a year became a starter and then then I was drafted in the first round as a safety to the to the St Louis Rams and I weighed 211 and so I I probably put on about four or five

Pounds you know per year but it was if if I remember is very gradual your weight gain absolutely in fact I’m sure we’ll get into this my entire worldview of sports and what I wanted to do was built on speed and Jay had kind of a contrarian

View to most at that time and we really believed that you know speed was King and so even though I was a linebacker and at that time the the the undersized linebacker was almost unheard of it was basically Pat Tillman paved the way who

I backed up wow and I owe a lot of credit to and then it was it was me there wasn’t a lot of undersized true inside linebackers it just didn’t exist and so where the Instinct was hey you have to put on weight you have to put on

Weight uh I resisted that and I and I believed in Jaye because I believed everything he told me and he said look it’s all about speed right if you put on weight that doesn’t work then you’re going to get slower and you’re not going to get cu no matter what I would never

No matter how much weight I put on I would never be an effective 230 240 pound back that just wasn’t me right so I had to learn to play the game with speed and speed has dictated my entire career and my entire life so you would agree with one of my poster like

Statements that you should never let the weit room interfere with speed well I have a different take on the weit room than most and that’s because of my experience with Jay um the weight room with Jay is and especially was very different than what anybody else would consider the weit room uh

Jay was maniacal about technique um it was never about the amount of weight you got up it was never about um getting through the workout it was about performance of the rep and and really everything was about position I learned that he many many examples and

And that was one of the first few things that I ever learned in fact you know that first meeting he made a couple statements that really kind of changed my perception on training and performance that really dictated the rest of my career so uh that’s where I

Think Jay was was was at his Brilliance because he understood how the body is supposed to work um and he understood that if you if you train him properly and you don’t train with the proper technique and you don’t ingrain the neuromuscular movement patterns necessary for performance then

You are taken away from your speed potential right and so yes I would say the weight room can can 100% be detrimental but I don’t I wouldn’t put what we did with Jay in that category I think it was he’s a unicorn in that regard yeah I think he’s a orn in in

Many regards um and and I I think that um uh your training of well let’s just get to the point of your incredible combine first and then we’ll go back to your training um at 6 foot to11 uh you ran a 4.46 40 um and 437 437 yes okay so

So you’re like one of the fastest safeties ever it’s pretty pretty good and then your vertical was also very good 39 yeah and one of the things that shocked me because you were not a conventional weightlifter but but you lifted um 225 31 reps which is which is uh that’s in

In the linebacker tight end category I mean that that’s that’s uh pretty unheard of for safeties right at that time I think somebody since his bro that was the record for for that was the record okay I think it’s still much higher than the the median uh or the

Average so uh so yeah just amazing stuff um and probably what’s not in your you know the my short shuttle was a 383 which is pretty good and my three cone drill was it was like 637 which was pretty ridiculous um bro jump I think I was at 10 feet 11 so it

Really it really didn’t M it was it was a pretty good pretty good all-around performance so so that that’s why the the video is called freak of training um I have a good friend Dan fter uh who uh is uh probably he is like the Next Generation

Jay schroer he has devoted his entire career to coaching football and CNS training I asked Dan for a couple questions that he wanted to uh wanted me to ask and uh one of the things just real simple um days per week and the amount of time let’s talk about like

Offseason training you’re in the summer how many days a week were you’re training and what kind of time well it was different there’s kind of two periods uh with Jay it was the high schoolc col period and then it was was the the the NFL period And so those

Are two distinct distinctly different time periods and our training changed you know dramatically uh I would say it was it was Heavy volume but when I was in high school and in college many times throughout the year I would since ASU was about 15 minutes

From where Jay was I would do the ASU program and then several times a week I would go drive over to Jay’s to do all the nervous system stuff so you know all the stuff at that time they were doing at ASU was really traditional the stuff you would say

That’s detrimental to speed right that just it just doesn’t make any sense and so I would actually go and supplement with Jay on spring break I would go with Jay and we would do double sessions a day during the summer anytime I had a break we would do double sessions and so

That was kind of my training routine um when it came down to the NFL in the off season we would start start out we would start out um I wouldn’t take a lot of time off after the season we’d start out right away and we would we would go once

A day for maybe six to eight weeks and then right around March April we’d go to we’d go to double sessions probably three times a week and so the volume was was pretty high this is to me what the genius of what what Jay did and I think

That people who didn’t train with him don’t really understand and Jay didn’t have this blanket template training program I think his genius was his ability to observe our bodies in the way we moved and understand are we fatigued if so how do I have to adapt the next

Exercise methodology in the protocol in workout right in order to recover and and look I’m not as a a a workout scientist this isn’t what I do this is just my vocabulary right my interpretation but we would recover whatever Energy System he felt was lacking he would he would create an

Exercise program to recover that energy system for the next day right and so it was this constant Evolution this constant changing methodology on a daily basis that I think allowed us to work out with intensity without overtraining right if that makes any sense to me it

Wasn’t like hey this is this is what we’re doing we’re putting this much volume in he he was brilliant it understanding our bodies were we overtrained enough to get a compensation effect um did we need to back off here if so we would still train but then he would change his methodology

He would change his methodics and how we ex work uh executed the lift we’d bench press we’d do some sort of upper and lower body every single day we would bench press every single day um it wasn’t a three times a week medium heavy

Light now it may be light but it may be high speed sometimes we’d go Max it was I don’t know the why or the how he did it but to me that’s why I was able to get Triple the volume of everybody else but not get overtrained and avoid

Injury I think that was one of the real key secrets to why I was able to get the results I did and then that’s that’s the thing that puzzles me because I am no one has ever said I was high volume I I’m like the antithesis of high volume uh but I’m

Also a promoter of something that is kind of revolutionary and that is that we should perform in practice and perform in training and as you said you know like Arizona State back in the day they were conventional and you know they just lifted hard and ran a lot and all that

Kind of stuff and that’s the same thing teams are doing today it hasn’t changed much at all makes you slower it makes you slower it’s ridiculous and it’s just they’re just plugging in the status quo tradition and they’re afraid to experiment and all those things and so

Here Jay comes and it sounds like he was pretty unscripted uh pretty artistic in experimentation and so forth but but if you’re performing uh in in your workouts he timed a lot of things right even lifts yes so performance to me that’s I learned this lesson early with Jay and again he was

The first person and really in that first conversation that really really conveyed the idea of the importance of the nervous system and how that was everything that’s the only thing mattered right the brain connection so what that’s all we wanted to do was strengthen that signal to turn

On and turn off muscles as fast as we could so one of the first first things that we talked about was that look you know you want to squat a lot but he didn’t he wasn’t interested in me squatting 450 pounds in over three seconds right because that that doesn’t

Convey performance he said I want you to squat 350 pounds in under uh in in in half a second or a quarter of a second when you can do that now your your nervous system has potential for Speed it doesn’t if you’re if you’re just doing Max heavy lifts at a slow rate

Right so that it’s not about hey get more weight on and lift more it’s all about performance okay well if you want to move at that velocity well your Technique has to be perfect because as you know if there’s any power leakage if there’s any biomechanics that are incorrect you

Can’t move fast right and so in order to move at those excessive speeds your Technique has to be perfect so those two things really really change my idea about training and about lifting so I mentioned to you he wouldn’t let me train with him so the first month I did

The workout routine on my own he told me to call him in four weeks so then I called him I said hey I’m done with this routine he said okay bring in your results and we’ll go over it and I was like okay results all right

So I went in there and he said well do you have your training log and I said no what are you talking about and so he just basically berated me in front of everybody again and told me I didn’t have what it took and I wasn’t disciplined or

Motivated so if I wanted to continue working out with him I had to write this training log every day and so that training log consisted of my waking pulse my waking blood pressure my body weight in the morning I had to record my dreams I had to write down every protein

Gram of protein carbs and fat that I had dout throughout the day and then he made me I had to have somebody stopwatch in time the concentric portion of every exercise of every rep that I did um and so I had to have find somebody to

To time me I say hey can you time this like every single rep and I had to record all this stuff and it took me about an hour a day and so but what what it did eventually I got to feel I could feel the difference in performing a

Bench press in 1.1 seconds or uh 75 seconds right I could I could start to like understand well this was a tenth of a second faster why was it oh I held position better oh my elbow was here oh I was able to eccentrically load like I

Learned so much about my body and really what it did is put an emphasis on every rep matters the performance of that rep matters it’s not just get through it right yes because that to me was was was another secret of what we did and it really learn I really learned that like

It’s not about just getting tired how do you perform right how do you maintain technique one more thing I know I can get long-winded here but one more thing that I thought was very important and I see this all the time was that we did do things till

Failure but it wasn’t when I start to get tired you notice anytime somebody gets tired either in the waight room or even running the first thing that happens is their technique goes down the tube right they’re just trying to get through it they do everything they can

Just to finish right well we always wanted to perform and fail in position right don’t sacrifice your position just for the sake of trying to get the weight up right and if anything Jay would spot an assist just enough so that we’re able to finish in the right position so when

All hell breaks loose and you’re tired and you can’t go anymore fight the urge to just break down force yourself to train in that position and I think to me again he always used to talk about you know being in shape is being able to hold position right and so when you’re

Tired can you hold position because then you’re going to be able to move faster and run faster so everything we did in the weight room was had to be he was maniacally he had to be perfect your foot position if it wasn’t right we had

To do it over again it just made you be so present in your training and it changed the shift from hey we’re doing this for a reason we’re not just trying to get through the workout right and I think that being present and being active participant in your training is

Another reason why I got the exceptional results you know another thing you’re talking about exceptional results um I believe and correct and I want your opinion on this is a short answer probably um you have to be pretty mentally fresh and physically fresh to do high level performance Level Training is you agree

Well I yes and no um well one thing I do want to say um just I just want to go back as far as volume goes um we were much more high volume in the early years now as as as we Advanced and I got through the

NFL it wasn’t as high volume that’s when Jay started getting more into like the the the long duration isos and that kind of stuff so it’s not as if we’re just beating ourselves my entire career right so like he adapted and evolved and I just want to say that but you know I

This concept of fresh I just always remember Jay saying that um he wants well a we had arguments about this but but I understood where he was coming from our perception of if we’re fresh or not does not always indic it doesn’t always showing our performance right so I may

Not be feeling good but he’s watching me in the gym working out and my performance is actually pretty good right so it he didn’t go based on how I said I felt he changed the workout based on how he saw me perform right so that’s very very different because you can feel

Tired but you can still go out there and perform right now again what I thought his genius was he was able to change the workouts to get the the the effect that he was looking for but he always said that my goal and what we’re trying to do

Is you want to be ready to go at a moment’s notice anytime anywhere you want your nervous system be able to turn on with no warmup just go out there and perform right and so he wants you to just be consistent Bam Bam like so I didn’t really care about being fresh

Quite honestly because I was just hey I don’t necessarily feel great but guess what I’m performing pretty good and then I had trust that he was going to be able to change and adapt the workout for the next work out and give me what I need right so he what the athlete

Feels sometimes and he was big and adamant about this isn’t necessarily the perception and reality of what’s happening but I don’t think there’s a lot of trainers and coaches really with that level that eye that can really understand their athletes right to be able to make those changes and

Adapt yeah you know my when you talk about ready at a moment’s notice Les Felman who is is one of the best uh NFL combine trainers in in in the nation uh talks about he loves guys he wants his athletes have Motors that run hot that

That at a drop of a hat they can Sprint they they they don’t have to warm up for 45 minutes before they take before they can Sprint you know so so that I love that running hot thing and you know what popped in my head you know your video

The video of you is called freak of training but do you think you were a freak of durability and a freak of recovery as well um I well yes and no um yes at an extremely high level because I felt like um I felt like there was nothing I

Couldn’t do and I felt like it didn’t matter I could perform and I was in shape and I could play an entire game and you know 1,000% I felt like physically invincible and and really um that there wasn’t anything that I couldn’t do now when it comes from dur

Comes to durability I think that’s an interesting question because you know if you’re if you’re uh on a punt team and you know you uh your your foot gets caught in the in the the crappy astro turf and you get an evulsion fracture in your ankle right well is

That due to training I don’t know no right and then you get into an issue where okay so now you know I come back and you play three games later and now you have zero doors of flection in that ankle and now your gate has completely changed but you’re playing pro football

And your gate isn’t normal for another eight months and then all of a sudden that travels up to your back and now you have a back problem right so I think it’s uh yes I think absolutely I was a freak of durability and and and recovery

But at the same time um you know the back issue is something that came up and it you know admittedly it did affect me my entire career and really for the rest of my life right getting back to the the recovery and durability part um I totally understand what you’re talking about

With the freak accidents I mean it’s a collision game and people are going to get hurt and I don’t I I think people that are trained really well maybe get hurt less but but that’s generally speaking my point was more like wouldn’t there have been a lot of athletes who

Went through exactly what you went through from high school to the combine who might not have survive that training um I don’t think that they a lot of people couldn’t survive the mental demand that Jay placed on on you and really um it took a a big psychological

Toll to commit to that kind of training and I think a lot of people showed up and thought or a lot of parents brought their kids there and said well Adam got these results but the kid wasn’t as invested as I was right just total commitment that you’re going to do whatever and

Again Jay Jay would test you emotionally and psychologically and and and quite honestly especially in today’s climate with with the way I think kids get coddled people wouldn’t put up with it I’ll give you an example the very first day that he said that I could train with them it is six

Months after I met him and it was uh so we were in the middle of June here in Arizona so it was 114 degrees out and we were he was we were going to train at a track and do a track workout and that was a black tar track on 114 degree day

It was at two o’clock in the afternoon and so I was ready to show this guy that hey I’ve got what it takes I’m going to you know blow him away with my work ethic and so I show up and I do I was late because I couldn’t find it and so I

I join in and it was fine not a big deal and then he said okay you have to do what they did before you got here and it was pretty simple um it was three 200 meter Sprints you walk to the start line right and you do three 200 meter

Sprints um I did the first one the second one my legs gave out and I started throwing up right and I was rolling around the grass throwing up just dying I probably laid on the ground for about 15 minutes and then when I got up they had all left me like they just

Left me there just to die I guess right and so I had to peel myself up and and I said man I can’t believe they left and nobody said it work to me they just left me rolling around on the ground and so I walk in the gym and the first thing he

Says is did you finish and I said well no I thought I was going to die and then he just went out at me again look you don’t have what it takes this is our very first workout so again the mental he kicked me out of the gym multiple

Times I had to show up the next day and like at 6: in the morning and wait there for an hour like Jay made you emotionally commit to wanting to be the best and I don’t think people would would would do that here’s what happened

Though when a lot of people came to work out especially professionals their body started feeling better they started to move better they got faster they thought oh my God like this is awesome right we had guys like that’s generally the feeling that people got when they came to train yes it seemed

Like a lot of volume and again the volume decreased as we became professionals but generally speaking um it’s amazing but people’s bodies and the injuries um I would say would be the predominant feeling that people get when they train with Jay so it kind of goes against maybe convention wisdom they’re

Not just and especially today they’re not just beating down the body consistently beating down the body right like like kind of I did in in the early years and and I think that is a product of focusing on the CNS that that CNS training uh I I tell people that when

When kids come to my workouts they leave in a way feeling better than they felt when they walked in that a lit up CNS is almost like a caffeinated effect where where you feel healthy and you just feel better well it’s again I don’t want to put words in Jay’s mouth it’s it’s

Nervous system he could care less about how big you get but it’s nervous system and then and and then training in the correct movement patterns so your muscles are used properly to me it’s the combination of those two um that really I would say is the

Focal point of what he does not just about sets and Reps it’s not about sets and Reps but the body the body moving and getting rid of all your compensation patterns that you’ve developed so you could move the way you were meant to move I think it that’s that’s where he

Uh really really shines yeah when you talk about getting the body back and and and getting rid of of of of the bad stuff and everything and and then also he was a big believer in breathing as well and and you know that that breathing and resetting the

Body uh goes right along with Chris corus uh reflexive performance reset stuff where it’s breathing he also did some um some you know some hands on the body work right some massage type stuff certain spots didn’t he um not he you know he’s big he really is a big believer and the

Proponent now of his his uh POV training the electrical stimulation that that that they’ve developed um that’s I would say that’s probably where he mostly feels like that’s his Niche and that’s his baby using using that so again I’m not I don’t want to put words in his mouth but

I would say it’s all about the brain body connection right so when you when you ask your muscles to do a certain task they work and they they work properly and they and they work at length right they don’t work in a contracted state so right again I you

Know Jay has has gone in in in his direction of training in a I can’t claim to be an expert on the what and the wise of what he’s doing these days I can only talk about kind of what what I did um in in kind of those early years in my

Experiences yeah how much did you sprint well we we in the early years we actually I felt like we sprinted we sprinted quite a bit a few times a um it just depended on the time of year it was um I actually looked forward to the to

To the track workouts and we would do he was big on overspeed training um but yeah I I I don’t know exactly how many times Maybe maybe once a week in the in the early years um as we got older and and in the NFL years it

It became a little bit less um I I enjoy sprinting I wish we would have sprinted a little bit more um but we did people were pretty astonished about the lack of running that we did training and I think what they were astonished was we didn’t do that high volume you know

Conditioning nonsense that people do but yet we were always in shape and and able to play a full game right so we didn’t there was Zero um distance work or conditioning work because we believe that that slows down the nervous system and you and you essentially you detrain yourself and so

We were not interested in doing anything whatsoever in the gym or running uh that was going to train our body to want to move slower what what did you use to uh overspeed then um there was a uh there’s like a there was like a pulley system yeah yeah yeah

I I have them yeah they were around 25 years ago at least police it with a like a nylon cord that was unbreakable and you tie one end and yeah they were better than the bunge cords because the bunge cords pulled you real fast at the

Start yeah and then not so fast when you wanted them to you know but the the pulley system was was fairly uh fairly good and of course now they use 1080 Sprint which costs like 16,000 bucks or something but it it’s interesting to hear you say that well and then so and

Then there’s another one I may maybe I told you this story but I remember it was in the when when Michael Johnson and Donovan Bailey in the 96 Olympics right and and I was again infatuated with speed and so I remember we were sitting in Jay’s office and we were breaking

Down both of their runs and just watching their running style and of course of course they had very different running Styles but I remember saying man I I wish I knew what it felt like to be that fast and so Jay says okay and so a

Week later he calls me and he says hey meet me over here at 6: am tomorrow I said okay so I show up and and he at that time he he drove a van and he opens the van and he hooks up this thing to the trailer hitch with like a handle and

He says okay hold on um I’m going to take you up to 35 miles an hour you’re going to see what it feels like to run fast right so like imagine there’s no safety there’s no nothing right it was just I’m hanging on and he takes me

Behind his van and I got a chance to feel what it had to feel like to turn your legs over that fast and you know I who knows if that had obviously it’s pretty dangerous but one thing I think that what’s important in in in life and

Athletics is that that concept of feel like you have to feel what performance feels like you know and so I think we over Coach kids we over Coach people and you you coach the instincts right but but when you feel what it’s supposed to feel like well that’s burned into your

Memory forever right so I think that like all these things are super important and I think that’s you know in a way you know I know I listen to the way you talk about running you have to feel what it feels like to run fast and you have to do that

Often right you have to imprint that into your body and go out there and Sprint right and so you just I’m a big believer in that so um that we did some pretty interesting things in in uh the Chicago area of course uh in the spring we get some

Really windy days and I I used to hate windy days because I just generally speaking I don’t like wind uh but but um you should take advantage of wind I think wind is the absolute best uh because nothing’s pulling your waist um you’re not you know like holding on to a

Van going 35 miles an hour or something uh but but a really high wind allows you to feel um new speeds and and I think if you if you’re spiked up and you’re timing you know kids kids are going you know just go crazy and and that that

Feeling of contractions that happen like in like a nanc and then the Forgotten part the relaxations that have to occur next or else you get hurt you are training your body to run hot and I just love all that stuff U I’m gonna switch gears here um

The type of training that that that Jay did that you did with Jay um could be considered Collision training where where you are absorbing force and generating force with a very tiny tiny tiny transitional period between if any at all so so basically that’s what you do when you

Sprint your your your foot hits the ground at like 2.5 body weights and and you are on the ground for one 12th of a second if you’re super fast and you are able to it looks like you’re bouncing but really you are absorbing that force and not collapsing and then generating a

Huge Force to get back off the ground really quickly and you’re not doing this in a slow State you’re doing it super fast and he did so many things working on this like Collision type of training in the waight room like the things I remember most of all are the altitude

Jumps where you would step off of big boxes which is totally Soviet um type stuff that he learned from the Russians and that’s wife played Russian music and all that kind of stuff um but but do you think that was a big part of your training

Absolutely I think that if I if I think back into the things that we talked about obviously the nervous system was everything it’s the only thing that mattered right okay well what does that mean um obviously performance usually is manifested by you know the concentric movement the results are

Displayed by creating Force right but Jay always talked about the need and the ability to absorb force was even greater because in order to create massive Force you had to absorb even more Force right you had to be able to store that energy and then be able to use it right that’s

What change of direction is and So the faster you’re able to turn on that contraction you’re reinforcing the signal from your brain to turn those muscles on and off right and again I don’t know if any of this is like scientific or whatever this is just no

That’s perfect you know what I mean that that clip that that little 5-sec clip should be you know like the clip I put out to promote this whole thing is it’s that whole ability to absorb force and generate Force really quickly which is totally controlled by the CNS yes that

Is explosiveness that’s power that’s speed and and every sport that I know of is a movement sport that even golf that golfers benefit from speed training and this type of collision training because it’s CNS if you get two miles an hour faster sprinting your golf your your

Club speed will be 15 miles an hour faster because the CNS controls all movement which so I just love that stuff and I think you said it very simply um the um you also uh did a lot of catching did didn’t you catching loads yeah so and that was again

Um I just you know remember like I spent a lot of time with Jay and we had a lot of talks like this you know and now it’s amazing how fast time flies we’re now in the you know over two decades since since I met him so I’m going back into

The uh into the archives of my mind of these conversations but but but they were important um you know what what he explained to me as far as dropping and catching was that um when you drop and you catch a falling load it turns off your self-defense mechanisms right and so

Your body now turns on even more powerfully than you consciously will do it right and so that was a way of circumventing and and getting even more powerful contraction because now it becomes basically uh a self-defense mechanism M right you’re going to turn everything on and then the other thing

That I remember spending a lot of time thinking that when you do catch falling loads and you do have to turn on that fast um the muscles and all the supporting muscles and the in the connective tissue all turn on appropriately the way they should and in

Order right and so you don’t always get that from just doing bench presses or just regular reps right and so to it was always how does everything work work together how do we develop everything the way it’s supposed to and really you’re taking advantage of your your

Body’s natural reaction on how it works by putting in it putting your body in a in a position to where its only option is to do everything right you know what I mean and so I think again that’s my interpretation and and it made sense to

Me and so then it’s like okay that makes a lot of sense because we want to absorb it and then how fast can we absorb it and then use it and to me me that’s sprinting that’s football that’s Athletics that’s how you generate power and that’s why we go back to the earlier

Part in the conversation where that’s why our training was different and where I would say most weight training as you would say is detrimental but we didn’t do training that way so all of our training was built on how do we turn on and turn off

Our muscles as fast as possible how do we absorb Force how do we create force and how do we maintain the right position do all these things under a tremendous load in the perfect bi biomechanical position so then we can go out there and repeat it on the field and

We don’t have to think about it that’s why I believe a lot of training doesn’t transfer because people don’t train the way it actually works on a field or on a track right everything we did was built towards how do you perform how does this work towards performance and how does

This prepare your body to go out there and handle the loads over and over and over again at that high high velocity one of the things you just barely touched on there which goes back to the Dan fter training about the neurological aspect of of collision

Training and all that stuff is that the brain one of the things in CNS training is that the brain’s number one job is not actually performance it’s actually to protect us yeah yeah protect yourself and so I love the term that Dan fter calls the brain a protective

Mother and if if you’re jumping off not jumping but walking off a six- foot box and and absorbing that Force you’re also training the brain to shut off in times of performance right and I I just imagine you know like like you have to come up and make a collision with a guy

When you’re tackling uh your brain will tell you maybe to duck away from that Collision right you know but you a good athlete uh takes away the governor and takes away the protective mother of a brain and is allowed to uh have collisions and like it or not e like

Even in track where we don’t bump bodies ever it’s still a collision sport because we’re colliding with the ground um basketball’s a every sport is a collision sport and if you’re not prepared for those collisions you’re not going to be very good and you’re going to really stress ligaments and tendons

And so that’s probably a part of your training as well yeah look you you just touched on quite a bit there that that that goes into training and performance and I I talk about a lot of this stuff um a lot with parents and just people in general

So I believe well a football is not natural right it’s not natural to run into people full speed right and I do believe that towards the end of my career because of the collisions I do believe that subconsciously my body started to say hey it’s enough right

Like you don’t really want to do this and so maybe it’s not you know the the the pace at which you play you know that Governor that you talk about is a little a little bit more heightened and then once you lose a little bit of that edge

Well you’re playing against the in the world and you know you can’t play um so I do believe that performance you do have to be able to reset that protective mechanism subconsciously that your brain has because you cannot perform it’s dangerous uh to the human body to perform at these extreme levels right

It’s dangerous it’s not it’s it’s dangerous to run as fast as Usain Bolt your body is not meant to to handle that kind of force right that’s only why one person can do it you got to train yourself to be able to do it right so to live in the

Extremes that’s what we do as Elite athletes it’s dangerous right and so that’s you you’ve got to be able to shut that off right and then to get even more out of your performance and training you’ve got to be able to push yourself past the point that you would do it

Consciously so I I think that is a a huge part of um of being an elite athlete and being able to circum invent that protective mechanism and then it goes into what I believe being in an all-in and in a commitment place right to be a a great I think in life but

We’re talking about Athletics you have to be able to be present and commit without a fear of failure or without a fear of the result and that means like everything is all in right right here right now with no worry towards the past or the future and so um I’m a big

Believer that yes that we have we have to play in that space and then the other thing that I think in my interpretation of you know dropping and catching and falling and all that stuff is just the importance of strengthening the connective tissue right it’s not about the muscles Jay always talked about

You’ve got to prepare the connective tissue to be able to absorb all the forces that we’re going out there and create and and and we’re talking over a 60-minute football game over and over and over and over not just the force of running but collisions I mean that’s

It’s a lot that you have to prepare for so um yes I believe that the way we trained 1,00% um prepared us and and prepares everybody to perform at the extreme levels one of the things that Chris corus talks about just to illustrate for people that are listening to this and

Are like new to this I think a lot of people are new to this you know like you know traditional weight room people traditional football coaches traditional track coaches they may think we’re speaking this weird foreign language but this is kind of the world I’ve lived in

For 25 years but but uh uh it is one of the things that is totally true that if you if a kid has poor vision you know like thick glasses probably the slowest kid in the class or you could say this you could take somebody let’s say take you your at

Your best when you ran a 4.37 in the 40 if if we put like dark goggles on you for a blindfold and said I’ll give you $1,000 if you run a 4.42 you probably couldn’t do it because your brain would not let you do it because your brain

Wants to protect you and one other weird thing that happens with track coaches we have kids that that cannot Sprint because they have hamstring tightness and you say Well when did you get hurt coach I I don’t know I said well then you’re not hurt he’s but coach it hurts

When I walk and what that that is a brain shutdown of the hamstring why because the brain says this is dangerous we should not be running this fast so all that stuff about overcoming the brain I love what you said too about we have to play with no past no future it’s

All now and it it really has to be a let it rip non-thinking type of play it has to be instinctual it’s instincts and this goes into coaching you know I coach kids and and and I talk about football on TV and so I interview you know I’m

I’m with the the best coaches and players in the NFL and uh you know I get frustrated because in this world especially in football but I’m sure it’s the case in everything everybody wants to be the genius in the schematics and they want to show all the cool stuff that they can

Do but the Real Genius is how do you simplify it so your players can play on instincts right because I believe that most players at any level um they get a ceiling put on them because they get to a place where they start thinking and there’s too much gray

Area and they don’t commit anymore right and so the genius isn’t your scheme the genius is how do I get my players to see the game better and let them play faster and play more confidently and get to a place where they can start to trust

Their own instincts right and so I think very very few coaches at any level really understand that but I’m a big big believer that I think we we over coach and we do coach the instincts out of all of our athletes 100% 100% one thing before I

Forget the um the other thing that that when I think of Jay I think of the uh like extreme ISO lunges and can can we talk a little bit about I mean I I think it’s kind of counter we do them all the time um but

We don’t do them for as long long as you did them like for people who don’t know basically you get into an extreme lunge position um and and you take it from there well first I hate it I’d rather do all the volume stuff

All day long all of it I hate I hate the isos um I know there’s value in it but I I hate it um so I I remember the very first day uh I remember the day the Genesis of the the iso holds uh we walked into the

Gym one day and he said okay you know what the cambered bench press bar is right the one that has you know where you go really deep yep so he said we put 225 on and you’re GNA hold this on your chest for five minutes and I was like of course I was

Like all right cool I was like I’m sit sitting there and I was like oh my God like what like I’m going to die right now but literally there was no like Hey we’re not easing into this I had to figure out how to like and again a lot

Of the weights now resting right but it’s such an extreme it’s not crushing my chest but that day was the Genesis of the iso holds right and so that’s you know he he he went on to explain well you know I believe that when you train

At the extreme ranges of motion it it it it strengthens the entire range right so that was kind of this was in 99 is yep so I mean again this is you know nobody was talking about this stuff um and I also believe that it that that it does uh train you

How to be able to hold these positions at the extreme joint angles right and so then it trains your muscles to be able to work the proper way I’ll give you a story one day um Jay had a tendency of um again he’s he wasn’t always in a

Great mood but we had just come back from one of our seasons and it was in January and so we’re tired we’re beat up like we’re weak from the season and he was pretty upset with us about something we weren’t working hard enough in the

Gym and and he said okay you guys are going to do uh ISO lunges you’re going to do four minutes each leg and there was no way he said every time you stop you have to add a minute and a half to your time okay uh Tony we were there doing

Lunges it took us two hours to finish so we probably ended up doing 35 minutes of active L because I mean we got tired but we we got tired and failed before the two minute Mark right so you’re you know you may have got your time down but now all of a

Sudden you got to add a minute and a half right and so we’re just sitting there dying so like that’s the kind of stuff that that he that he made and so finally we had to take like you know 15 minutes rest we’re like hey we got to

Rest more so it took us it took us two hours to finish four minutes of of iso lunges um but yeah so Jay is is really big into those I I hate it I give me volume all day long I do understand the importance of it but it is it’s boring I

I wish there was another way now did he ever talk about the idea that I think I’ve read about him saying is that people think that there is no movement or no contractions in in an ISO I guess no movement in isol lunges but he says there actually is movement and it’s an

Extreme slow Ecentric is really what it becomes yes and and I think correct me if I’m wrong but have you ever witnessed what I consider like an extreme ISO lunge what I call the Jackhammer effect where the front leg starts twitching and and I think it’s co-contractions going

On and but you know like you know I’m more of a chemistry guy than a kinesiologist um but but I think there’s co-contractions going on and and and the foot which we try to keep the heel slightly off the ground the the the foot starts bouncing like a jackhammer and

And then to throw in all that stuff there’s typically not soreness the next day because you’re not going through massive Ecentric stuff is that your experience yeah well it’s been a while um I I don’t choose to no on purpose never um yeah like I said um as

So a lot of people that used started training with us after I went to the NFL J shifted again it was a different shift in his philosophy a lot of the stuff we did in the early days with me that I experienced was a lot of the super super

Super high volume and then it went into more of the performance stuff and the and the and the ISO extremes and the the arpwave stuff and the POV stuff and the neurological training um very very very very different and I used to long for the good old days I’m just an

Oldfashioned I you know I used to be like man I hate doing this can’t we just do all the the volume stuff that we used to do um that’s just me personally because that’s that’s kind of what I grew up doing so I gravitate more

Towards that but I again I told you this a little while ago there’s a lot of people had a lot of different perceptions about our training because they only saw snippets on television or a certain video and to and if you just think that’s all that it was well then

You’re like well this stuff is too dangerous you can’t do this it’s not right but nobody really understands how Jay being present how he how he observed the workouts and put it all together and all the different things that were related to Performance um most pretty much everybody that trains or goes to

CJ again the first thing they notice is how good my body feels my body feels great and and it’s amazing it doesn’t matter what athlete you are because he doesn’t make you train in positions that put stress on your joints and your ligaments right and so that’s that’s

Really one of the keys right everything you do is trained in a biomechanically correct position and if it’s not they train your body and your brain and that signal how to get into that position and when you train in the most efficient position possible your body doesn’t hurt it’s

That easy right and I I don’t believe from what I see out there that that people um train in the proper positions I think that’s where he ke really is at an elite level of understanding how the body is supposed to move and then how to train it for

Performance uh in those in those movements that makes the thing that just popped in my head there you mentioned how how you can still perform uh with proper mechanics and and uh and and body positions even when you’re fatigued but you also contrasted that with how a lot of people under fatigue

Get sloppy in their mechanics sloppy in their positions and and so maybe it is that trained sloppiness that creates soreness and makes you feel like crap I would imagine and then the other thing is you know there’s a lot of you know this conversation brings up a lot of different thousands of conversations

That I’ve had in the past with would say um another key concept of what Jay really imprinted on me is the importance on the Ecentric part of the exercise um almost all people when they perform that part of the exercise allow gravity to lower them into position and that goes into the

Joints but when there’s this concept of pulling yourself into position with the an agonistic muscles that now load the connective tissue in the muscles and off of the joints right and so there’s an art to performing The Eccentric part of the lift and elongating those muscles that doesn’t happen when you

Just allow gravity to pull you into a squat or a bench press right and so you know for example on a bench press it’s not just lower it you know you’re you’re pulling you’re actively pulling into position right and you’re you’re you’re you’re not resisting it like a negative

You’re not trying to hold it up you’re pulling it right so you’re actively using these muscles again the detail of the training that we did in the performance of the exercises again I never see anybody to this day talk about this stuff but like every single thing

That we did was with that level of detail of feeling the way your body’s supposed to work how do you pull yourself into a lunge don’t just lower yourself and let gravity because then the all the force goes into your joints and then all of a sudden your knee hurts

Or your ankle whatever right again that these are the things like all these little details that you can’t get from just hey we’re going to do this these sets and Reps because so and so does this kind of a workout it doesn’t work like that you’ve got to actively

Participate and holistically put it all together um those are the things from those videos that people don’t understand the level of um of intellectual participation that you have to put into your training is just as important as the physical exertion right you you can’t just show up and do the workout yes and

And there’s Nuance I think all coaches have incredible Nuance that if you plug in somebody’s Playbook into your high school football team you’re going to suck you know because the important things in those plays are not the plays it’s the Nuance the little things but one of the

Things that um uh that Dan fter does and I think it’s it’s it’s hard um hard to for me to tell a 16-year-old kid to get down in a lunge position but activate that front hamstring let’s let’s pull let’s let’s feel a pull and I I think

They have a hard time not doing just what you said which is just whole and and you know try to support Against Gravity which only goes into your joints and not your connective tissue so he does a thing where he just gets a a band

And pulls on the calf that front calf a little bit so that the kid kind of feels the where he has to pull back then he’s just lighting up a part of that kid’s brain that gets him to do that thing well and that’s nuance and then the

Other Nuance I just love because as I’ve told you my X Factor stuff has was all based on you and what Jay did with you and when when I promote my stuff and people say coach I need sets and Reps for your xfactor stuff I said they don’t

Like my answer my answer is I don’t do sets and Reps it’s unscripted it’s free flowing it’s sometimes experimental and and I do it by feel by you know I I hate to call myself an artist but but I’m not I’m not quantitative in our xfactor stuff you

Know like a kid might be able to do tons of Med ball throws but only a couple Russian lunges because they’re so intense and so all that stuff has just been reaffirming to me you look I think that um the best people that do anything in life it

Is art and you are an artist I think that you have to have you have to have core fundamentals you have to go have core principles and really the the the 10,000 Minutes that people talk about or the 10,000 hours that people talk about isn’t it’s not a participation grade

Right it’s not like hey I do this right those the reason why it works is because if you spend that amount of time actively participating mentally well then now it becomes a part of your instinct and that’s what allows you to become the artist right you have to have certain fundamental tools but

Until you own that process it takes that amount of time and experience of feeling these things right you can’t just read it from a book you can’t just listen to you or listen to me or listen to a lecture Jay gives you have to feel these things you have to internalize all these

Things and then you have to then your interpretation is your part right and so I’m a big believer in that and again I don’t care if you’re doing this or if you’re calling plays on offense or you’re a football coach or if you’re just you know an entrepreneur right I just think

That that’s why I have a hard time with the phrase just work hard um that implies that you’re just entitled just because you put in the time but that it’s not that right if you’re not actively participating and you’re not actively trying to feel these things and you’re not obsessively always thinking

About it and how to make it better well then you’re just you’re always going to be stuck in the science part and then you’re going to be confined by numbers and graphs and all kinds of crap while the artists are out there doing all the cool stuff right the guys that really

The game different yep that that’s that’s a real good ending but I I got I mean like I got like like a true ending here um two questions one is would you do it all over again which part great would would you go through all the stuff you went through from the

Day you called up Jay to the uh to the end of your football career would you do all that all over again um you know what’s funny I I gave a uh a talk in front of a a group for a friend of mine that said a big a big consulting firm

And um it was with 120 or so of the his senior leadership team and he he actually opened up the the the talk it was kind of a Q&A session this was last year about a year ago today and he actually opened up this talk with that

ESPN video of me and Jay and so it was funny because I kind of thought about this question that you asked me I honestly I miss those days I I I really how do I say this it that those days were like like the days right when when it

All came together and you were just active and you were just like in it um that those were the days you felt most alive as a human absolutely yeah absolutely because you’re just like you’re so intense and you’re so present and you’re so just locked in and you’re

Just it’s all about performing it’s like yeah absolutely i’ do it again I missed that because that’s like without that that’s what we all want that’s what keeps us going right like just being that intense and that present um absolutely I do it 100% again I I I miss

It and I wish I could go back and I wish I could do it now but my body I don’t think would let me as not the second question but the followup to that question um is there anything you said I could ask anything um that is there anything in your life I’ve

Heard that the life of a retired professional athlete is one of the hardest lives in the world um probably because you almost got emotional talking about sure uh about the days and is there anything that you have found in your present life and it’s okay to say no that stirs your blood like

That um yeah well I mean yeah obviously I it’s funny I get the older I get I get a lot more emotional I get emotional all the time um yeah me too I think this is probably for another podcast like the mental and emotional part our next one but our next podcast

Yeah um because you can I spent a lot of a lot of time thinking about how we develop into men and who I was then who I am now that transformation where you’re the center of the universe right and the the the everything starts and ends with

You and how that could be a house of cards to a certain extent and then when that’s gone you have this empty feeling because you feel like well what is there there is that it right it’s kind of that thing so I’ve gone through a tremendous tremendous growth

Process um my career didn’t end the way I wanted it to and it was I was at a very low point in my life um it just happened to coincide with the birth of my first son um and and really I would say I went from a person

That I you know I’m ashamed of a lot of the the ways that I the way ways that I acted and the way that things that I believed in when I played football um and so I think that when you start to transition and in in full disclosure when you when you

Finally you finally find God and and what that means when that really wasn’t a part of your life and you start to understand that your role is to be more of a servant rather than to be here for yourself it’s a powerful transformation so um yeah I think it’s very hard for

For a lot of athletes because I think a lot of get guys get stuck in that identity and I think it’s a false identity I think that um when everything begins and ends with you and your career and you being an athlete and you having money or whatever it is and

You don’t have something else that’s actually real and tangible that’s fulfilling I think it’s a it’s a pretty cold empty place that’s that’s really powerful stuff and I think my reaction to that is I I filled that in my life with coaching that that I I feel the most alive I’ve

Ever felt as I think about practice today you know and that’s that’s the cool thing about being a coach that’s probably why a lot of professional athletes become coaches is that that’s close but but I think being an athlete combines the mental the physical and everything but I do feel sorry for

People that um have to transition it’s got to be tough it’s it’s it’s not easy it’s not easy um but again uh my my my journey and my path may be different than than some but um you know certainly I love coaching I love working with kids

I really feel like but I do really feel like my most important contribution is is is really to be the best husband and father that I can sure you know and so I get a lot of satisfaction from my current job as a broadcaster for CBS and and primarily

Because I had to overcome so much you know personal stuff to to actually get good at this and it it’s completely unnatural um and I I experience pure pure joy and pure Bliss on Sundays I I just love it um but but you know I I love coaching kids I love developing

Kids I love I love talk talking about my experiences because I really think there’s a lot that uh that I can that’s happened in my life that I can share to help people and not just focusing on the successes but but but a lot of the

Failures that I have that that have come and how to and and really that’s where the learning comes from