28 Combining bodybuilding and athletic training

you know, recreational side of things. You know, and and then I wanna do some kind of uh sporting activity at the weekend, maybe Saturday morning, play some uh kind of basketball or soccer or whatever. And I want to incorporate elements of athletic training into my program. How do I do that? Um, now what we're gonna do today to kind of uh capture all the possibilities and and make this as relevant to as many people as possible, we're gonna kind of try and present this as a spectrum.

So basically um you've kind of got uh sort of a range of options open too if you want to kind of do this. Um, you can either go down the route saying, um, the program is a bodybuilding program but we're gonna add some athletic uh kind of elements to it and make it a little bit more athletic and allow us to do that.

or the opposite end of the spectrum is gonna be we're gonna ha an athletic training programme and we're gonna incorporate a little bit of hyperty extra into it. And then of course you've got anywhere in between the uh two extremes. So, um With that said, let's jump straight in and start talking about this because I think actually talking about this is probably gonna give more information than um, you know

me giving a long talk about how physiology works. Um so so let's let's start with somebody who's doing a pretty kind of comprehensive um bodybuilding training programme. Not necessarily obviously going to be a competitive bodybuilder because if they're a competitive bodybuilder, they're all in on that particular kind of sport. That's their sport. They're not going to be kind of looking to play another sport the weekends. They're kind of bodybuilding is their sport.

So but, you know, maybe there is somebody who's recreationally bodybuilding, but, you know, they do now want to start incorporating a little bit of athletic uh kind of uh training into their routines. So Rob, how would you go about, you know, helping that person who maybe comes to you for a consult consultancy session and says, Look, this is what I'm currently doing. It's a really kind of

you know, comprehensive bodybuilding routine that I've got going, you know, is pretty good. I mean it works. It's three times a week. It does all the kind of regions. It's not kind of doing silly things, uh, you know, kind of like you know, pro splits or anything like that. So the programme works as a bodybuilding programme. What are you gonna kind of start with as a way to introduce some athletic uh elements into their training programme?

Um, the stuff that I'm gonna add right off the bat is gonna be super basic. Um introducing some jumps, you know, right off the bat. Almost everyone can go, you know, right into some vertical jump work, maybe some um, you know, broad jumps, stuff like that.

Um, not really a high barrier to entry there. People want to get into you know, a lot of people want to get into running and sprinting specifically when they think of being more athletic. Um there I might not throw someone right into max velocity sprinting off the back. Um you know, maybe some worries about um hamstrings and some other stuff. But you know, in that case maybe something like a hillstone

Um, you know, where the velocity is gonna be a little lower, they're gonna be a little more lean forward, they're never gonna really hit that max speed. Um, would be a good introduction and get them obviously doing something way faster than they've previously been. Um, and I've definitely given that uh people that plenty of times.

Um, yeah, so I would say those would be my two main ones and then obviously some throws for the upper body. Especially if you want to play, you wanna play basketball, you wanna play volleyball, you wanna hit something, you know, just getting some like high speed, high effort throwing off the bat would be uh a good rep.

of a kind of workout. So uh they'd be looking at their existing workout plan and we would just say, look, you know, you do your warm up, um hopefully. Do kind of uh temperature based warm up, um, whether it's uh cardio or as you do standing under the hot shower. And then you go into the gym and you do um three to five um kind of max effort vertical jumps.

and, you know, a couple of medicine ball throws. And, you know, um, as time goes on, they can add in some uh horizontal jumps, they can add in some uh throws in different directions, uh, maybe even start looking at uh rotational throws. And and that kind of, you know, really won't take up enormous amounts of uh their workout time. It's adding, you know, five to ten minutes extra into their total workout time. So hopefully not kind of uh pulling away too much from the existing

kind of routine that they're doing. So we're trying to be as minimalist as possible, really, on this uh kind of side of things. Okay, cool. So that's like a uh

a adding in the tiniest possible element that we could for somebody who wants to keep as much of their bodybuilding stuff as possible. Now let's take another step and say, okay, so this is somebody who now wants to uh take their uh athletic side of things a little bit more serious.

Not like we're not coming from the opposite end of the spectrum still. We're still just taking another step. Um, so I'm guessing that this is the kind of place where you would start thinking about adding in a little bit more of our classic framework. So our classic framework being uh high velocity, heavy strength training, plyometrics, and then eccentrics at the end. So if we're taking that extra step, what would your next kind of um place to go?

And then, you know, towards the end of the workout, maybe that point, depending on the sport and what the person wants or needs, start introducing some playos. Um and then you have some eccentric stuff. So if they do want to start getting into sprinting, for example, start doing some eccentric work for the hamstrings. Um if they're playing somewhere where they need more change of direction, things like that. Think about some eccentric work for the quads.

Um, you know, then yeah, at that point just base it on whatever sport activity the person wants to get into more and then start adding just a little bit more of those things towards the end of the workout.

Um, but we're keeping that high velocity stuff. Now we're looking at the heavy strength training stuff and we're going, Okay, here are heavy strength training exercises that I would be doing as a bodybuilder or as a recreational bodybuilder. I'm now going to start having to pull some of that out and replace it with Hip flexor work with heavy rotations. Um if I'm not doing hip thrusts already, they are absolutely going to be going in.

This is the Hip Thor Span Club. So ultimately that has got to then come down to the individual saying, Well, what am I prepared to give up? Uh and, you know, people will look at you and say, Well, you tell me no no no, it's about what you want. It's like

it's your physique, you make the decision, what are you prepared to give up in order to get this athletic side of things in there. But we'd absolutely want hip flexor work in there, strength work, we'd absolutely want a heavy rotation, we'd absolutely want hip thirst. Those three are non negotiable, really. Yeah. I I mean I'm kind of assuming that they're doing some kind of squat pattern or or kind of like

And then and then obviously finally we're looking at the uh eccentric works. We've probably got a couple of reps of Nordics and reverse Nordics. Or, you know, actually what what could happen, this is an interesting idea. Uh instead of um the knee extension and and leg curl being done in the heavy strength training part of the workout, you could just pull them out and do them as um e-centric.

could be pretty cool compromise uh because you will get a heavy strength training benefit from that. Um it's just uh not a perfect one.

Cool. Okay. So that's kind of probably somewhere in the middle then. That's like a kind of combined sort of style program. And then I obviously then the opposite end of the spectrum would be to say, well, you know, what if somebody's coming from the athletic side?

So they're they've been training as an athlete for a period of time and they now want to kind of move slightly more in the bodybuilding direction. Actually I think this is probably the easiest example of all of them, but um let me know what you think. I mean tell me what you'd do.

Say currently an athlete's doing maybe just a few exercises, big compounds, we'll say like a hip thrust, a squat, a leg curl, some kind of press, some kind of like pull down chin up, and then, you know, maybe some kind of

dip overhead press, something like that, which is pretty common. Usually it'll be pretty minimal. You know, athletes aren't spending a ton of time in the gym. Also and you want a more bodybuilding style program, well, you know, whatever regions and you d muscles you decide you want to grow.

start adding. If you have currently just uh, you know, for your overall back you just do a pull down. Well immediately maybe add in a a Kelso shrug for your traps. If you're doing just pulling exercises, obviously elbow flexors aren't getting a ton out of that. throwing um, you know, one or two curl variations based on what you want. Um middle delts, one that, you know, aren't really typically hit super well in an athletic focus program. Immediately do, you know, behind the neck press.

um a lateral raise, something like that. Um, something that'll actually hit that area a bit more. Triceps, you know, some direct work for like the long head to round out your arm. If you're just doing presses, probably not getting very much a long head tricep in there. So you know, then start with like an extension with the arms at the side and then yeah, just go on from there, whatever regions and that you decide you want to start growing the most to round out your physique.

add in those exercises and then if you have to, um, you can start pulling out the plyos and things that you might not want to keep in all year anyway. Um, you know, you throw in a leg extension, you can take out eccentric quad work, stuff like that.

Is it because maybe you're just not competing right now? And in which case actually you've got a lot more freedom. You can move from two times a week to three times a week. You've got you know, capacity to move stuff around, you can drop out some as you say, the pliers are gonna come out automatically if you're doing that anyway.

everything in the training week has to kind of um be taken into account. So um if somebody's been doing like a bodybuilding just coming back to the original example and where we're starting out with bodybuilding style routines and then moving towards the athletic uh side of things.

you know, uh if the bodybuilder or the recreational uh kind of bodybuilder has been just doing their thing for the last kind of, you know, couple of years and now they're suddenly deciding to put an extra kind of uh exercise in uh session into their training week and that's maybe a Saturday game or whatever, and then they actually also now want to do a midweek training session with the team that they're going to be playing with at the weekend and you're like, okay

They're like, No, no, no, I wanna keep doing three times a week or every other day or something like that. I'm like, Okay, I've got some bad news for you.

you're taking that extra step and you're going, Okay, um I'm now gonna want to do some actual athletic exercises like hip thrusts and um kind of heavy torso rotations and that kind of thing. Yeah, hip flexor work in my actual heavy strength training. I'm gonna have some pliers in there, I'm gonna do some, you know, kind of uh super maximally centrics and I'm gonna have like a midweek training session with the guys before I then compete at a weekend. Okay, now you're on a two day a week program.

And they're looking at you like, No, no, no, no, I wanna do three. I'm like, I don't care.

two goals and meet those goals as quickly if you're doing them at the same time compared to do if you're just training for one goal simult you know, at at a time. So if you want to be an athlete, train like an athlete, fine, no problem at all. I wanna be a bodybuilder, train like a bodybuilder. Do that, no problem at all. Wanna do both things at the same time, you are now gonna be proceeding at a slower rate.

on both of those things. That's just because recovery over the entire week is limited and every single exercise cause is exactly the same type of fatigue. I'm just going to say that again for people who've maybe missed that. Every single type of exercise, whether it's aerobic, whether it's anaerobic, whether it's strength train, whether it's plometrics, whether it's supermaximally eccentric. Every single exercise causes the same post workout T mechanisms and they just add up.

So if you start doing lots and lots of extra exercise during the week, they start adding up and you accumulate and by the end of the week you're now in a state where you can't actually perform and you can't get the adaptions in the subsequent training sessions that you're gonna do. So you just have to start taking stuff out. And that means that we're always gonna move people from three to two times a week. Um

Still full body, of course, but we're gonna move them from three to two'cause they are going to be doing other training sessions as well. Assuming that um if you get to that point where you're taking the athletic activity so seriously that you're now doing heavy torso rotation.

So cool. Awesome. Um, Rob, so what are you seeing in um the kind of the wider fitness industry in terms of approaches?'Cause you mentioned um I'm just gonna kinda uh jump in and kind of uh add a little bit of context to this. Um, I have my own kind of reasons for talking about those'cause I see um a problem very, very commonly, which is um that

Um, some people will just say uh athletes just need to train like a bodybuilder and then just play their sport. And I I'm very, very opposed to that. I think that the uh kind of program that we've or the model that we've outlined uh is is a hundred times better than that idea. Yeah

to improve those things and it just doesn't happen. You know, since I started with one of my girls, we've put like five inches on a vertical jump. You know? Yeah. If you're getting everything you need from just playing games and then you can just bodybuild on the side. I mean, yeah, it sounds great, it sounds easy, but in practice that just never works. It's like you can you can squash that super easy.

and the and the strategy and all of those things at the same time, your brain is not going to produce max effort, uh mot uh uh devote all of its max effort uh potential to motor unit recruitment and phone rates. It just can't do that. So you don't get those kind of adaptations the way that people think you do.

Uh it just fundamentally comes from a misunderstanding of how adaptions are actually stimulated. They think, Oh, I'm moving quickly, therefore I'm gonna get speed related adaptions. No, that's just not how it works. So but yeah, I mean, even that I mean, that's just the whole speed side of things. But of course, you know, you've got all the other stuff as well, uh, on the strength side. I mean, that's certainly not gonna come from the sport.

And I don't see any heavy torso rotations in many bodybuilding training programmes and I don't see any hip lexer work either. I mean it's cool.

you know, kind of uh a heavy toss or rotation from the throwing or uh kind of swinging uh uh side of things. And um in terms of eccentrics, there's just nothing there. I mean, that's just completely absent.

Cool. But uh when we were talking about uh this just before the podcast, you mentioned that you've seen a lot of bodybuilders come out of bodybuilding and move into athlet

they just didn't happen to like isolate, you know, while they're like sure they're not isolating their external rotators and they're not doing all these like little goofy exercises. But if you're trying to become athletic You don't need any you don't need any of that. Like I'm I'm never prescribing those things. I'm never giving someone a a bamboo bar bench press to work on their shoulder stabilizers or like very, very, you know

um demanding like stability, demanding single leg stuff and all these like weird variations. And I see a ton of that. Um, you know, and in that case you'd be much better off taking your bodybuilding program and then you're just chug in a couple of jumps and throws at the beginning. But instead they do all these weird variations and, you know, funny looking exercises. um isometrics just for the sake of it. Um, you know, because they're

most of the time people were saying they're getting uh, you know, neural benefits and increasing recruitment potentiation before they're set, like things like this, you know. A lot of the classic stuff we talked about in the potentiation episode. Um yeah, so you just get you get all these wild programs, tons of plyo work, like really, really high volumes of plyo work all of a sudden off the bat. Um and I've seen a couple guys, not naming names, hurt their Achilles, hurt their

knees, you know, stuff like that.'Cause all of a sudden they're doing just a million reps of these things when they haven't done them in a decade. And, you know, you and I talk all the time about pyos and using very low doses and that and I myself you know, when my athletes and myself use really, really low volumes of pile work and then you see someone doing, you know, eighty eighty jumps.

I'm like, yeah, this is not a recipe for being athletic. It's a recipe for um messing yourself up off the bat.

They've got, you know, kind of uh their brain is focusing so much on balancing that they can't really focus on motinate accrument. And of course you've got big coactivation going on at the joint. So there's there's just there's there's very little capacity to lift any kind of uh load there. Um Obviously that's not really having very much of a training effect in terms of the um kind of uh strength adaptations that we'd be interested in.

But it's also not doing anything extra. So I think a lot of them go into that they go into that they go into that type of training. They go Okay, I'm giving up a little bit on the strength side or the hypertrophy side, but what I'm gaining is they think they can transfer this this stable uh this this stabilization ability that they think they're gaining. to a sporting context and you can't. That's the that's the that's the really big error.

it it should be pretty common knowledge at this point that they're not doing anything. And I've seen people do um, you know, like ankle stability training and they say it's improving ankle stiffness for running and things like that. And I'm like, you So far off from our cere it's unbelievable.

uh is absolutely not true. Um but yeah, so stabilization uh training or stability training or training to try and gain some stability in other circumstances like sport from an unstable exercise is definitely a big error category. Um and then the

Yes, the another error category would then be throwing in uh loads and loads of plimetric type exercises, which as you know, we've said is is literally uh kind of the opposite to helpful because all it's doing is kind of repeatedly straining and recoiling the tendon.

um which doesn't make it really adapt positively, it's probably just gonna create damage. Uh and that is obviously potentially gonna be a problem further on down the line. As you mentioned, people end up with tendinopathy sometimes in that scenario.

And we did a podcast on that. I mean we did a whole

um slings and fascial regions and blah blah blah. And, you know, I don't think people I mean a lot of times athletes obviously they're great athletes'cause they're genetically gifted. They're not well educated in strength and conditioning. So they tend to fall for these, especially post career.

Um but yeah, y you all of a sudden you do all these like goofy things and maybe your body, if you're beat up from, you know, high level athletics, feels a little better initially because essentially it just comes down to load management instead of doing a lot of hard, heavy things.

you're now kind of doing nothing. So like initially you feel that and then you get you get the idea that these things are oh I feel good. This is good for me. It's gotta be something positive. And y you can't target any of these things anyway. And whatever you're doing, like It's not really doing anything. You can't train fascia separate from muscles and muscle fibers. It's not happening. Um, that idea is like all over the place. Um right now and it is crazy.

It yeah, I guess it's like we're training something that is that is separate from the the muscles that we were training. It's like they were training muscles and now they think they're training something. Are they training sort of systems or are kind of uh muscle and fascia combinations or something? I don't I don't really I've never really looked at it seriously'cause I I don't see any data

uh in the in the research literature. So I don't look at it. And actually that's just um an observation that I I kinda would like to make more generally. I do get a lot of questions where people say, What do you think about? and then they insert the name of some kind of model that somebody's working with. You know, and I'm like, Well, has there been any published data talking about the underlying physiology? And they're like, No I'm like, Well then I won't know anything about it, will I?

if it hasn't been published and I don't know about it'cause I don't go reading on the internet for, you know, random models that people have made up. Um which may or may not have value in them, I just don't know because I can't

see what I don't read about. So, you know, there you go. Um There's been a thought just kind of rolling around in my mind that I just want to kind of add before we finish, which is that um yes, I d I think it's it's important to kind of Recognize that there are errors that occur, like the search for unstable exercises. and the uh overuse apply metrics. But there are kind of some exercises that I see that I think are probably useful ways to bridge someone from

one type of training into a different type of training. So you were kind of mentioning hill sprints as a as a way to bridge someone from going uh f sort of

From a pure bodybuilding perspective. I mean imagine someone who's literally just been doing nothing but kind of machine work for a couple of years and never done anything like a run or a sprint or a a jump or anything like that. And now we're kind of starting to just move them in the direction of going, let's do something a little bit more athletic.

And obviously we kinda said look, counter movement jump, medicine ball, slam, great kind of starting places because you can kind of start submaximally and you can just kind of work your way up and they're very kind of low kind of um, you know, challenge, low problem, low low kind of uh impact if you like. Um For that reason I do actually like and um people are gonna kind of hate me for this

single leg uh squat uh squats, I don't like single leg uh as in split squats, I don't like uh lunges, I don't like anything like that for bodybuilding purposes. I think that the coordination demand uh really makes it kind of uh a little bit uh pointless. What I think is interesting though is If if you're bridging someone from doing just heavy strength training and you wanted to start moving towards the eccentric side of things, um, I do actually like lunges for that reason.

Dece that deceleration and you can work in different directions. I actually quite like that as a kind of way to start moving someone.

towards doing um more athletic ki type situations because of the as you say, the deceleration is very, very directed into exactly what they're going to experience in a sporting context. Because if I kinda like say take someone who's just been doing nothing but but machine excises and then try and get them to start doing uh, you know, running around a court, changing direction.

Um, I'd be much happier if they'd done some directional lunges uh to kind of accustom their body to being able to decelerate in those different directions. before doing that. Now, does that mean that I'm gonna start putting dire multi directional lunges in every single athletic programme? No, I'm not because the athletes have been training since they were twelve and they don't need to do And that's the thing people miss. They're like, Oh my athlete is

you know, kind of running around the court all the time. They need to do multi directional lunges. I'm like, no, they don't'cause they've they've their body has figured that out since they were like, as I say, twelve years old. They don't need to do that'cause they've already got it inside their their the their kind of

you know, operating system. But if you what I'm saying is if you're starting with someone who's literally just been bodybuilding for, you know, however many years, they never really had a history of sport or maybe their sport was come in like swimming or something, like, you know, my sport was.

So like, you know, just people go, Oh well, you know, how do you uh I like to joke that you kinda take a swimmer and put them out out out of water and they kinda look a lot like a penguin because Because they're kind of like they're sort of like they've got a uh like they can go in one direction really quite effectively. You try and get it to go sideways, it's just the wheels.

It's literally just a couple of forward ones, couple of and the focus is it's not a strength training exercise. It's a a a a a starting point towards uh eccentric training uh that is specific for the uh kind of loading parameters that someone's gonna see in sport. And I'm not talking about this as being something that c people carry on progressing for, you know,

long period of time ago. I'm just saying it's an interesting way to uh bridge people in that direction. If you like it's c yeah, it's kinda like a uh a a sort of uh a transition type uh strength training where in the future they'll just be playing the sport, doing the super maximum eccentrics, doing the heavy strength training, and doing the kind of the method that we've described.

But I think in this particular instance it's an interesting kind of uh sort of thing to drop in there. Uh I don't usually give this kind of uh practical kind of stuff'cause it's not my uh area of expertise.

everybody who wants to get better at vertical jumping. So I mean, even if they're running an athletic pra training program at the moment, you know, they will probably learn a lot about how to improve vertical jumping by joining this group. Um They just want to improve athletic. I mean the good thing about vertical jumping is

that it is a quite an all round kind of uh sort of athletic uh training kind of um activity. So um if uh if somebody wants a general athletic training programme, they're not looking to sort of focus on anything in s in particular, this is gonna be a great start.

Um but again, if they're wanting to improve vertical jumping specifically, it will be absolutely perfect for that purpose. And ultimately it probably fits pretty much in the exact middle of um the spectrum that we've been talking about today.

uh a sort of an element of uh kind of physique maintenance in there as well. So uh I think this is probably, you know, a really, really good program for people who uh kind of want everything, but also it's gonna be a super solid p uh programme for any athlete Uh because it is still gonna be running two times a week. I mean that's that's the important thing. It's not deviating from that.

Cool, fantastic, very exciting. So hopefully that will start to make the high performance physiology model a little bit more or method a little bit more popular. uh this idea of doing high velocity work, heavy strength training, biometrics and super maximum eccentrics at the end in a workout for athletes um pretty much all year round, according to what they need, um rather than kind of having phases and periodizations and all that kind of nonsense.