Today’s episode features Mike Guadango, coach and owner at Freak Strength in Oakland, New Jersey. Mike has mentored under coaching legends such as Buddy Morris, James “The Thinker” Smith, and Joe DeFranco. He has coached athletes from NFL, MLB, NBA, MLL, Rugby League, Rugby Union and Olympic medalists to pre-pubescent athletes. including 10+ NFL Super bowl Champs, 10+ All-Pro/Pro-bowl selections, 5+ College National Champions, 10+ Division 1a All-Americans, 20+ Collegiate All-Americans & players from every Division 1 conference.
Mike’s coaching success aside, he is one of the most authentic and transparent coaches in the industry. As a field, we are always looking to push forward into more efficient and effective systems that serve athletes to a greater capacity. Mike has been transforming himself into a “one stop shop” as a coach, and upcoming acupuncture practitioner that allows him a greater versatility in his role in the high performance spectrum.
If you listen to this show often, you know that I value real and authentic conversations, and this talk is the epitome of that. For this episode, Mike talks extensively on the role of the strength coach in context of high performance sport coaching, and the potential of the physical preparation industry to evolve into something greater.
He also discusses things like his own personal journey in sports performance, and how he now views athletic development and training. This show ties into James Smith’s global dynamics model (of which many previous podcast guests are evolving towards) and offers great insight into the future of sport training from a philosophical perspective.
Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster, supplier of high-end athletic development tools, such as the Freelap timing system, kBox, Sprint 1080, and more.
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Key Points
- What led Mike into getting a degree in acupuncture as a sports performance coach
- Mike’s journey over the last decade that have changed his thoughts on the goal of sports performance
- How little we actually know of training in regards to the grand scheme of things
- How Mike’s views on barbell and maximal strength training has changed over time
- Mike’s view on the role of a strength coach and who should be assigning GPP exercises and work loads in a high performance program
- How Mike performs his movement training for his athletes to help them feel and perform at their best
“The bigger a business gets, the more inefficient it becomes”
“More tools in the tool box, now there are less people that need to man the tools”
“If you asked me a question 6 years ago, I had an absolute answer”
“It takes 10 years to start learning someone else’s techniques, then you spend another 10 years developing your own techniques, then it takes another 10 years you spend honing your techniques, and then you teach”
“The whole industry is a big salesy industry, and no-one is doing anything new”
“Unless you know your why, there’s no reason to be doing it”
“Isn’t that the goal, use as little stimuli as possible to yield the same result”
“Getting stronger is as easy as falling out of a boat and hitting water….As long as you aren’t dealing with weightlifters and powerlifters, let’s not overcomplicate it”
“If you get one leg strong… aren’t you getting both legs strong? We are splitting hairs here with so much stuff.”
“Because we don’t know enough, stay the f^@k out of their way and let the athlete perform”
“What is the true measurement of the exercises we are doing, why are we doing them, why are we so married to them, what are they going to do?”
“If an actual skills coach was able to learn and apply what we do we (strength coaches) are done; from a general standpoint I don’t think there is a need for a strength coach.”
“The skills coaches should be able to acquire this information with relatively little effort, what I think is that strength coaches are going to start to become skills coaches and that’s kind of where it should be. It’s like track and field”
“As you learn more and more, strength is just one part of the puzzle”
“There needs to be a change, and I think that change is going to be making it’s way from the strength coach up, not the other way around”
“All my training sessions are auto-regulated”
“I’m not married to any specific exercise, and I don’t hate any specific exercise”
Show Notes
Mike’s lunge circuit as mentioned in the show
Transcripts:
Mike Guadango: So, I’m a lot more simplistic in my views on weight training now. It’s … I don’t want to say doesn’t matter, but Charlie Francis called it chicken soup. I mean, you can’t f*** up chicken soup. You throw in some chicken thighs, and you throw in some onions, and you throw in some carrots, and whatever, right? And you got chicken soup. But, how much of what? Does it matter? It won’t make that big of a different. How much better can chicken soup get? How much worse can it get? As long as you’re not a total monkey and throwing s*** everywhere, you’ll be fine. Getting stronger is as easy as falling out of a boat and hitting water.
Joel Smith: That was coach Mike Guadango, speaking on the simplicity and the context of strength development in an athletic performance program. You’re listening to the Just Fly Performance Podcast.
Joel Smith: Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster. SimpliFaster is an online athletic performance technology shop, distributing items such as the FreeLap timing system, GymAware, K-Box, 1080 Sprint and the Speed Mat. I’ve gotten many of these items from SimpliFaster, and can confidently say that they make today’s best training technology available to everybody. The FreeLap Timing System has revolutionized both my practices and my athlete assessments, allowing me to look at the 10-meter fly capability of dozens of athletes in a matter of seconds. It is wireless, compact, portable, and incredibly versatile. The K-Box and 1080 Sprint are fantastic tools for any coach looking to build speed, agility, and implement training scenarios that go beyond the traditional weight room.
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Joel Smith: Welcome to 151, episode 151 of the Just Fly Performance Podcast. I’m your host Joel Smith. I’m still kind of chuckling from doing the little into that Mike did on the teaser, if you heard it. Mike is just hilarious, man. Mike Guadango is our guest today for episode 151. I’m your host, Joel Smith, if I didn’t say that already. You probably know that.
Joel Smith: Anyways, Mike Guadango is one hilarious, but also incredibly wise and passionate and evolving individual in the athletic performance field. I was so stoked to have him for this episode. If you don’t know who he is, he is the owner, a coach and owner at Freak Strength in Oakland, New Jersey. Mike was originally noticed by working with Joe DiFranco, who is a legend in the industry, and also a previous guest on this show. He has also mentored under the incredible wisdom of coaches such as Buddy Morris and James “The Thinker” Smith. Mike has coached athletes from virtually, not every sport, but a lot of them, NFL, Major League Baseball, NBA, Rugby League, and Olympic medalists, all the way to young athletes, and has had tremendous levels of success. His wisdom has shown through, and he’s also a personal trainer to Kevin Love in the NBA and just is becoming this one stop shop, as he’ll talk about today, in incorporating and adding on multiple skills to his repertoire and his abilities.
Joel Smith: All that aside, Mike is just one of the most authentic and transparent coaches in the industry. As a field, we’re always looking to push forward into more efficient ways of doing things, and to these greater levels of awareness. We’re pushing outside of bubbles just to look back on things and see things more clearly, as to how we can more, one, just use our time more efficiently as coaches, and then being able to, with that taken care of, being able to push forward into new levels of education and learning, and ways to serve athletes that will yield greater transfer.
Joel Smith: As always, one of the big things is talking about strength training and barbell training, as you heard from the teaser, and once … and just not hyper focusing on just little elements of barbell training, so we can get outside of that, and be able to serve athletes in a greater capacity. I value real and authentic conversations. This talk with Mike Guadango is the absolute epitome of that. I was laughing all the time in this episode talking to Mike. I was laughing editing it, not … in a good way. My wife was listening to me edit this thing and she was like, “What are you laughing at?” And I was just, Mike is just hilarious and authentic, and real. When we look at … I think when we look at both … if you’re an athlete listening to this, you’re not necessarily coaching people actively, there’s a ton of gold in it, just in looking at what matters in your own training, but even more so if you’re a coach, whether you’re a track coach, sport coach, for physical preparation, whatever. Just how this show puts things into context, and I think how it shows how the whole field is evolving and where we’re ultimately heading, is awesome.
Joel Smith: So, for this chat with Mike Guadango, we’re going to get into Mike’s own personal journey in sports performance, largely how … I think the Matrix and the Red Pill is so profound, but Mike’s going to talk about his own experience in that, of himself as a coach now versus say even five or ten years ago. It’s going to tie heavily into the global dynamics model that James “The Thinker” Smith has put out there, of coaching, of which, if you listen to the Sam Portland episode and some of the other guests that we’ve had that are not just a physical prep coach, but also sport coaches, and how that is evolving the industry and what we do. We’re going to talk about Mike’s journey, he’s going to talk about how little we actually know in regards to training in the grand scheme of things, and with some illustrations of masters in other fields, such as acupuncture, and these long term mentorships and how our field is kind of just a very shade, a small shade of that in some sense, as we just intern for a year and we’re thrown into the field.
Joel Smith: He’s also going to talk about the role of a strength coach, and how we’re assigning general physical preparation means and workloads, and he’s going to give us some insight into his own movement training for his athletes to help them feel and perform at their best. This was super-enjoyable, awesome show. I hope you guys truly enjoy it as much as I did.
Joel Smith: When does it really stop for you? Do you kind of get … I mean, do you get a nice little downtime at any point here? Because I thought you were like NBA winding down, I thought it was going to be pretty chill. Do you have any time to unwind a little bit?
Mike Guadango: Traditionally, I think it was April, was always slow for me, the end of April was always slow going into the beginning of May, and then the month of September, those were usually my slowest months, or my slowest times, but I mean, since starting school, that’s not the case. And then, with the influx of professional athletes, like this September, I started training Kevin Love, so that was consuming all my time, so even my free time was just, it was so jam-packed with all … between phone calls, and emails, and testing, and dealing with all these guys, I really don’t have any free time anymore. There’s no slow time.
Mike Guadango: The only slow time that I actually had this year … actually that’s a lie, I had a week off … I get two weeks after my semester is over, we get two weeks in between each trimester, and that one week, Kevin was actually in Thailand. Phuket or something like that, I don’t even know how to pronounce it.
Mike Guadango: That whole week would have been a perfect time for me to just chill out and do whatever … I got some kind of stomach virus, and I was up all day and all night just puking and s***ting my brains out, for probably two or three days straight, and then the entire week, I was just completely ruined. So then, by the time he got back from vacation, I was finally feeling better, and then I had to go back to work. So, I’ve had in the past year, I’ve had legitimately one week off, and I spent it laying on the couch.
Joel Smith: Yeah. There’s absolutely no shame in spending it lying on the couch. That’s one thing I’ve learned, is it’s totally fine. You don’t have to have an epic vacation and take Instagram pictures. Look at my epic week off and how awesome it was. I know this isn’t common for strength coaches and sports performance, or whatever it is, and I know we’ll talk about that, but to go into acupuncture. What led you down that path?
Mike Guadango: I want to change my thought process. I took a personality test actually over a year ago now, s***. One of the things that it said was I’m low in abstract thinking, so I’m the walking example of men with a hammer syndrome, right? To the man with the hammer, everything becomes a nail. I literally need to teach myself to use other tools, and have to go out of my way to think like that, because I can’t … it doesn’t come naturally.
Mike Guadango: I want to learn a brand new way to think. Acupuncture’s a very woo-woo way to think. Especially for someone like me. That’s very … it’s very Western based, that’s how I was brought up with everything, so it’ll expand my thought process. On top of that, I want another … I want something else to be able to do. I want to be able to oversee more, because most of my guys, my pro guys will go see acupuncturists anyway. I don’t like … I can handle all their rehabs, I do everything now essentially. But now, when it comes to sticking needles into guys, needle intervention, I didn’t have the authority to do something like that, and I didn’t know what the hell these guys were having done to them.
Mike Guadango: So, I didn’t know how invasive this was, would we be able to do any high intensity work post needle intervention? What’s the story? Did you have acupuncture before this? Do you have acupuncture after that? What is the recovery going to be like? And I could talk to someone about it, right? I could bring in an acupuncturist, too if I wanted to, but there’s nothing … you can’t understand it unless you do it. I really wanted to learn how to do it, that way I could literally handle absolutely all aspects of physical preparation outside of surgical intervention, and pharmaceutical.
Mike Guadango: But even acupuncture has an herbal program, that if I wanted to, that’s like their pharmacy, but most of my NBA guys, NFL, most of my pro guys, I wouldn’t be able to do any of the herbology with, because you don’t know what’s NCAA legal and what’s not, or NFL, NSF certified, all that stuff.
Joel Smith: Yeah, that is the kind of weird thing with … I’ve gotten into a little bit of herbalism stuff after, I’ve had Logan Christopher on the show, who runs an herbalism company down in Santa Cruz. I’ve been using a lot of that, and I love it, but I can’t … I’m not supposed to recommend anything to athletes anyways, but even my post graduates who aren’t in school, I wouldn’t feel comfortable … how are you going to test positive for … I don’t know like Pine Pollack? What’s some of these things going to do? It’s kind of a funny or an interesting world. I have a huge respect for that thinking about acupuncture and the thought process, and kind of opening up … that takes a lot of awareness to kind of understand where you are like that, and something to know the next step that’s going to make a huge change. I think that’s incredible.
Joel Smith: I was going to say as well, I’ve never had acupuncture done, and I don’t necessarily understand it, like you said, but I do know … I was just talking with Keegan Smith on a podcast that I recently recorded with him on the more people there are, it’s like a business. The more people there are in the management team, or the bigger the business gets, the more inefficient it gets, so it’s fundamentally … the more people who are working on an athlete, there’s too many minds to connect together, you know? And there’s just too much … we’re not like an ant hive, it just doesn’t work that way. I totally get that being able to have more things under your own control better is going to give you, and also probably give the athletes a much better experience over time.
Mike Guadango: Yeah, and that’s just it too, right? The bigger a business gets, the more inefficient it becomes. I’ve never wanted to be a businessman, I don’t want to manage people, I just want to freaking coach. Whatever enables me to do the most coaching with the least amount of oversight of coaches or employees, the better. It’s like more tools in the toolbox, now there’s less people that need to man the tools. I can handle … I’m proficient in all these different exercises, all these tools, good. I don’t need anyone else to do it. I become the one stop shop, and it makes my life … I mean, makes it busy, but it makes it way easier for me to account for absolutely everything. And all money stays in house, if you’re in the private. So, now instead of them going from place to place to place, “Oh, I got to go get a massage, and then I have to go get needlework, and then I have to get personal training, and then I have to get stretching.” I can do absolutely all of it.
Joel Smith: Yeah. I feel like that’s just such a good situation. I bet you you’re probably learning a lot of things, even though it’s acupuncture, like you said, it’s a little woo-woo. It’s something that, especially the Western drug and I guess you could say non-preventative, I’m not sure what the word I’m looking for, but it’s hard to understand for a lot of people, but I’m sure that’s probably also teaching you a lot of things about just how the athlete’s body works, and helping you to make more connections just in general, just training the general athlete, just straight up, like crossing things over. Is there anything that you’re learning from acupuncture that you’re porting over to just the general training process?
Mike Guadango: Oh, totally. Now, to be clear, I’m in my first year. There’s 150 credits that I have to take. It’s a three year program, and I’m barely … I’m just kind of getting into it now. So, I barely know all that much about acupuncture right now, but the little that I know, with some moderate pulse diagnosis, some tongue diagnosis stuff, I’ll look at an athlete’s tongue, and be like, “Oh, you’ve been eating X, Y, and Z.” If they’re complaining of joint issues, or whatever, and I can give them some different foods to eat and different … we do different cupping techniques on them in different points, for whether it’s with the acupuncture points, or just general muscular areas, it makes a big difference with them.
Mike Guadango: Because now, all of the sudden, rather than just saying, “Oh, my shoulder hurts,” and we cup their shoulders, if we go through certain pathways and certain acupuncture channels and stay consistent with those, it actually facilitates the process, which is really cool. It’s kind of like the … RPR, right? You’ve heard of RPR, and it’s on all these different points. It’s kind of like a combination … that’s kind of where they’re trying to go with it. It’s the combination of the Western and the Eastern coming together to have the Western goal, and really being able to apply the channels to a general population. How are we going to get these people and how are we going to simplify certain things to be able to transfer over? So all you got to do is palpate your chest if you want to hit your calves or something like that.
Mike Guadango: There’s certain pathways that exist that for some reason, acupuncture thinks they found, and they seem to be working. And I’m using some of the rudimentary s*** that I know to apply it to some of the guys without … obviously without using needles, and it’s really been helping. It’s pretty cool. The guys, and the kids get a kick out of it, too.
Joel Smith: Oh yeah. I’m sure. And yeah, I remember when I was doing, it was actually the Be Activated classes I was doing before RPR came along, but with Douglas Heel, and as he was kind of explaining some of the points, he said, “Oh, if you’re an acupuncturist, this is point K-27,” or something like that. He would have … it was all interrelated. It’s even cool too, as I learn more about direct current electro stim, and I printed out a chart of the acupuncture points, because when that current hits one of those points, it’s this almost like suction of … you feel it so much more than when it’s at other points in many cases. So, it’s my chance to learn a little bit more about that part of the body.
Joel Smith: It’s cool learning about muscles, but after about 10 years, it’s like, “Okay, I think I got all of these down.” There’s always more to learn, right? It’s cool how it all can come around.
Mike Guadango: Yeah, the other thing too, is I’m a compulsive learner. I really, really need to constantly be learning. It was stressing me out, it was probably part of my freaking psychosis. It was stressing me out that I wasn’t going in an actual direction. So now, I joined a curriculum. Now, I don’t have to stress, the curriculum is showing me exactly what I need to learn, and it makes my life that much easier. It’s pretty cool where we’re going over different lung points right now, and different muscles, and different … that the acupoints actually, a lot of them coincide with certain trigger points on muscles.
Mike Guadango: Like Lung one for instance, that’s your pec minor. It’s a lung point, and it’s supposed to help with any kind of breathing or skin issues or whatever. Lung one goes right on the pec minor, which the responsibility is inspiration. Which is pretty cool, that’s how they figured it out. Lung two is on the subclavius, right? Those are motor points there in themselves. So, it’s really cool how they kind of … and the acupuncturists have no idea what the hell I’m talking about, because they’re not exercise physiologists, so they don’t know the body like that, they look at it in a completely different way, but it’s cool how a lot of … they really figured a lot of stuff out, whether they knew it or not. That it would actually have this type of effect, because … I mean, did they know what a pec minor was 5,000, 3,000 years ago, however long it was? Or the subclavius? No. They didn’t have this assignment. They didn’t know that the muscle did this. They just … I guess they swung and hit.
Joel Smith: You’re listening to the Just Fly Performance Podcast, brought to you by SimpliFaster.
Joel Smith: Yeah. And it’s awesome too, how you’re able to connect those worlds as you go along. I like what you mentioned about learning. I’ve heard, I think it was Robbie’s podcast, you were talking about how you would wake up at like 1:00 in the morning and just learn … or you’d stay up until late, and you just learned something until five in the morning or something like that. And you would pick the subject … what exactly was that schedule that you had? Because I’ve never heard anyone who’s done that before.
Mike Guadango: One of my favorite things to do, was to wake up, set my alarm for 2:00 in the morning. I’d set my alarm, and my girlfriend at the time, actually when I first started doing it, I was engaged, and I’m no longer … by the way, I’m divorced, so now my girlfriend at the time, I had done that for four or five years, and I would wake up at 2:00 in the morning every Wednesday. Wednesday was my favorite f***ing day. I’d wake up at 2:00 in the morning, take either an Adderall or a Provigil or something, obviously I had a script. And then brew a pot of coffee, and then just read non-stop for maybe 20 hours. My plan was, I saw this one TED Talk that said, “All you need to become truly average at something is 20 hours of work.” So I said, “Oh s***.” And then on his 20th hour, was him playing the guitar, and he was like, “Oh yeah, I’m pretty average at the guitar.”
Mike Guadango: I’m going to take that concept and apply it to things that I want to learn. And they say anywhere between five and 15,000 hours to become an expert at something. Whoever said that. Rather than spending 10,000 hours on a subject, I said, “Well, I’m going to go in depth. I’m going to spend … pick a topic that I want to learn, spend 20 hours learning about that topic, then I’m going to find three to five subcategories of that topic, and spend 20 hours on those, and then find three to five of those topics … subcategories of those subcategories, and spend 20 hours on those,” and before you know it, you have an average amount of knowledge in one category and its different realms, and all of the sudden, you became an expert. It was really cool. I kind of stumbled upon it.
Mike Guadango: For about four or five years, I was doing that weekly, sometimes twice a week, and it really … I love it. I haven’t done it in a while, to that extent, but it’s … those were my favorite days. I used to look forward to Wednesdays all the time.
Joel Smith: Yeah. It’s almost like … I’m sure that way of learning is certainly not for everybody, but I think about the American educational system, I guess even the world in general, but you go to school and you spend the whole semester on something of which you’re going to forget a lot of it, at least in traditional education. I think obviously you doing acupuncture is something totally completely different and immersive and directly relevant, compared to a standard liberal arts education, where it’s the whole semester, if you just spent 20 hours on something, enough to be proficient, and it’s intense and focused, there’s something to me, that’s very powerful about learning that way. Totally different too.
Joel Smith: I just have huge respect for you for waking up at 2:00 am, there’s no way I could have done that.
Mike Guadango: You’d be surprised. If you’re really interested in something, but again, this goes back to our earlier conversation of how I developed brutal anxiety, because I was sleep deprived for four or five years. Four hours of sleep a night isn’t conducive to any kind of mental health. But, you’d be surprised. You’re interested in something, you find the time. When your kids were first born, you woke your a** up, and you fed them, and you rocked them, and you changed their s***ty diapers, if it’s important enough to you, you’ll do it. That just happened to be really high on my priorities.
Joel Smith: Yeah, exactly. I really admire your passion and the feel for just learning and everything that you’re doing. One of the things that you said the last time we talked on the phone was that you felt like where you are now, and the way that you’re learning about the world of sports performance, physical prep, whatever the label is that you want to put on it, is far different than it was six years ago. You had mentioned if someone had asked you six or seven years ago about various topics, you would have had a good answer, but it’s totally different than what it would be now. Could you talk to me a little bit about your journey over the last six years? What are some of those, I guess the Matrix, red pills that you took, where you were just like, “Whoa. I have a whole new rock to turn over to learn about this industry and the way that I approach athletes.”
Mike Guadango: Yeah. Six years ago, seven years ago, you asked me a question, I have an absolute answer. I remember when I first tried interning, or I first emailed Buddy Morris to intern with him. I said, “Listen, I have a good idea on how to train an athlete in the off season, that’s easy. But, what I’m really stuck on is the in season stuff. I know what to do for the off season training. I don’t really know what to do for the in season training.” I’m fresh out of college, been a part of the DiFranco’s for a few years, but at that point, been personal training and stuff, so I really thought I had a handle on stuff.
Mike Guadango: I mean, you could have had me on a podcast than, I would have told you exactly how to train Usain Bolt. I know … I’d like to think I know way more now than I knew then, and my answers just … I don’t f***ing know anything. It’s … I’ve turned down more podcasts than I’ve been on, because of that reason. I’m sitting here and I’m … I mean, who really knows the answers to any of this crap that we’re doing? It’s … I just feel so uncomfortable talking about what I don’t know, without saying that I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about.
Mike Guadango: I’ve been around DiFranco’s, I was a part of DiFranco’s Gym for over 10 years. I was working there for five years or so, or seven years, whatever the hell it was. Now, I’ve had my own spot now for five years, and I was mentored by Buddy Morris, who was one of the first strength conditioning coaches ever, and James “The Thinker” Smith, who is … anyone that’s heard this podcast knows that … or his any of his podcasts, any of his interviews or global sports concepts, or read his book, they know he knows his s***. These leading guys in the industry that I spent significant time with, and I just don’t feel like I know anything now.
Mike Guadango: After talking to one of my deans, or the dean at my school, he was doing this one technique to a guy, and he was massaging his hand, looks at the guy, is like, “Does your back hurt?”
Mike Guadango: And he said, “Yeah.”
Mike Guadango: “Lower back, left side?”
Mike Guadango: He said, “Yeah.”
Mike Guadango: I looked at him, and I said, “What the hell are you doing?”
Mike Guadango: He goes, “Oh, it’s a … you’re not going to learn this.”
Mike Guadango: I said, “What?”
Mike Guadango: He goes, “Yeah, it’s a family technique.”
Mike Guadango: I said, “Well, where’d you learn it?”
Mike Guadango: He said, “China.”
Mike Guadango: I said, “So, I got to go to China to learn this stuff. Who taught you in China?”
Mike Guadango: He said, “The masters.”
Mike Guadango: I said, “What the hell’s a master?”
Mike Guadango: He said, “Well, in acupuncture, the masters are the guys that read all the books before they were burned. In China, communist China came and took over, they burned all the books. So, the masters are the people that read the books before they were all burned.” So all the acupuncture books are kind of being rewritten.
Mike Guadango: So I said, “Oh, well why can’t people just go and learn from the masters?”
Mike Guadango: He said, “The problem is, they’re all dying off.”
Mike Guadango: I said, “So, why don’t you teach? You’ve learned from them.”
Mike Guadango: He goes, “No, I don’t know enough.”
Mike Guadango: I said, “So, you’ve been a dean of a school, for 15 years. You’ve been practicing acupuncture for 25 years, 30 years, and you don’t think you know enough to teach people in that extent?” That’s the problem with our industry. I’ve been doing this for 10 or 12 years now, whatever it’s been, and I train a lot of high level guys, and a lot of people are asking me oh, write a book or release a product or do this interview, do that interview, you’re one of the leading guys. Dude, you ask an accountant who’s been around for 10, 12 years, they’re just a f***ing accountant. They’re not the leading accountant, they’re not the guy. It takes years to develop that, and he had said it takes 10 years to start learning someone else’s techniques. Then you spend another 10 years developing your own techniques, and you spend another 10 years really honing in on your own techniques, and then after that, you go and you teach.
Mike Guadango: I’m really … maybe I had an accelerated process where I might be developing my own techniques now, I guess, and I really need to start perfecting them, and then … I don’t know, but I’m nowhere near where I want to be, and comfortable enough to really be calling myself an authority of anything. That’s always been my … not always, but recently, that’s been my drawback. Let me not speak about this, because I really don’t know what the hell I’m saying.
Joel Smith: I totally understand that. I think I was Charles Bullock who said, don’t even write in this field until you’re 40. And I’m like, “Oh s***. I started when I was 23.” I see that in myself. I see the same thing in the sense of what I thought was true five years ago, or when I was 30, I don’t agree with anymore, and how my pendulum has swung back and forth on a lot of things over a period of time. I think … I saw someone post this on social media, it was like, “Where are you? Ask yourself where are you done [inaudible 00:31:06]? Which the average person wouldn’t even think about. Or basically, where do you … the mental heuristic where you think you know a lot more than you do early in your space, and then you slowly start to learn more over time, but it was the same thing for me in a ton of areas.
Joel Smith: I always think to myself this shows, I think I guess maybe how arrogant I was earlier in my … just even physical prep career, but I would think to myself, “What am I going to learn next year?” In the sense of … not like I’m not going to learn anything, but I’m like almost this thought where it’s like, “Wow, I feel like I kind of got it. I feel like I know a lot. I’ve had a lot of good experience.” And trying to picture myself the next year knowing more than I do now. And now, it’s easy. Now I’m 35, and I’m like, “Oh, I’m going to know way more next year than I know …” the more you start to take on and realize what’s out there, the more you realize that that is exactly the case. Now, I’m like, “Okay, when I’m 40 or 45, I’m like …” it’s almost like I’m excited for it. I’m excited to see where I’m at at that point, because I just look at that journey and that space, and I totally get it.
Joel Smith: I want to dig into that a little bit though, too. I think that takes a lot of humility to say, because I think that that … it’s rare to come across somebody who would admit that, especially in a world of train the NFL combine. My guy ran a four three, like oh, look at my training program. And then, that also develops a mysticism around things, because everyone’s like, “Oh, what was the training program for that one guy who did that?”
Joel Smith: And then it just gets crazy, but I just think it takes a lot of humility and then perspective on your part to actually come forward and say that. I feel like if more people were like you in that sense, especially those of us who haven’t been practicing quite that long, because I mean, I haven’t. I mean, we’re both in our mid 30s, right? We’re far from the acupuncture masters you’re talking about. I think it just takes a lot of perspective, and humility to actually come forth and say that and admit that. I think the coaching field overall would be a little better if we had a little bit more of the perspective that you’ve had.
Mike Guadango: Oh I know, and that’s been my big issue with the industry, is it’s all based off of a bunch of f***ing know it alls. They know the best way to get stronger. They know the best way to get faster. The best way to jump higher. I just can’t be a part of it. It drives me nuts. I hate having to whore myself for business. I refuse to do it. I post a video of Kevin Love on my business page, of him doing some basic stuff. Some of his warm-ups, some of his push/pull stuff that we do, and it’s … someone had commented, “Oh, he’s doing all beginner s***.” Well, what do I have to do to make it not beginner s***? Have him on a f***ing Bosu ball? Add some bands and chains? What am I supposed to do here? It’s all … so if I had him on the bench press, the bench press is a f***ing beginner thing, too isn’t it?
Mike Guadango: Oh, but if I add 600 pounds, all of a sudden it’s an expert. I mean, there’s so much different s*** out there, and so many different people talking s*** out there, that know absolutely everything, that I just don’t want to be … I want nothing to do with it. That’s another reason why I started doing the acupuncture thing, is just so I don’t have to be associated with strength and conditioning anymore, either. So I can just, “No, no. Don’t mind me, I’m just an acupuncturist. Don’t mind my views. I’m over here doing my own thing, and I really don’t have anything to do with the meathead crowd anymore.”
Mike Guadango: The whole industry is … it’s a big sales-y industry, and it’s … no one’s doing anything new. I think that’s the most important thing, outside of technology, nothing new has happened. What’s Graston? Graston, ART, all this different f***ing s***, it’s all massage. Graston is Gua sha is something that the did in acupuncture in Chinese medicine … they took s*** and scraped you with it. That’s what Graston is, and now you’re doing the rock, not the rock … not rock tape, the rock scraping or some s*** like that, I forget what the hell it’s called, but they have all these different techniques, all these different … and it comes down to just reinventing the wheel.
Mike Guadango: Again, outside of technology, there’s nothing new going on, so what are we claiming here? I mean, even something like different ELDOA stretches, right? Yeah, I love ELDOA stretches, I think they’re awesome. It’s f***ing stretching. Fascial stretching. It’s different aspects of Yoga, and now what we’ve done with Yoga is bulls*** too. Yoga originally started as ways to meditate longer. You go into these positions because it was uncomfortable if you sat for too damn long, so you had to go into these positions to stretch a little bit longer, so you could meditate longer. And all of the sudden we have Yoga for Booty and it’s so f***ing stupid. We just keep trying to reinvent the wheel, and there’s nothing that needs to be done.
Joel Smith: Yeah. I think it’s hard in our society too, to find the right direction in the sense of … I try to spend as little time on social media as possible, but it is interesting making observations from time to time that if it’s a sports performance directed video, the ones that get the most views are the ones that the person did a really good job, either it’s a new an interesting or unique exercise, or the … well, I shouldn’t say again new, it’s a unique, off the wall exercise that could somehow be attributed to the athlete’s prowess, which gives us hope that maybe we can be way better if we just did this one thing. Or it’s something where people really do a cool biomechanical analysis of whatever drill or movement they’re doing, and it looks good, and it’s easy to understand, but even those videos fundamentally have a lot of things that are not right with the way that the athlete is being trained sometimes, but yet it’s all people know. That’s how they learn.
Joel Smith: I’m just kind of getting in this realm, where I’m just finally starting to get formally mentored, and really truly critically think about human movement. I’m like three years in, and I’m just starting to really be able to take it on and watch athletes and finally understand it. That’s three years of dedicated time with a mentor, as often as I can. Versus people who are just watching an Instagram video every now and then, and then have a curriculum in exercise science class that doesn’t really teach you anything about training athletes. It is just an interesting place with how our learning process comes about. I did want to kind of dig into a few … the big rocks of the field that I feel like your views may have changed over time. Just because I think that … I think our industry is kind of based on a certain amount of staples.
Joel Smith: Like you said, it’s tough to … the basics are the basics, and it’s effective. I think that having the most thorough understanding of the basics is good, because then you understand when something’s bulls*** and when it’s not. That weird off the wall exercise, like okay maybe the person … I see where you’re going with that, maybe there is something here, versus I’m just doing this because it’s … I think a lot of stuff is technology based, too. It’s like let me find a way to use this technology that fits with my objective, when it really isn’t doing anything. Not that technology … I think technology is good, but I think sometimes you can get obsessed with … you have a string on a bar that tells you how fast it’s going, that’s awesome, or a jump mat, all these things, but there was a lot of really damn good … I look at high school track and field in the 80s in the United States, and even college track and field. I say those two populations, because that’s a little more absolved of the drugs of the 80s than the professionals I think.
Joel Smith: But, there were some really damn good marks before we had all this research and before we had all these social media and all this stuff, and people were just fast, and they were just doing the basics. I just think that there’s always a lot to be said of it, but in terms of your views on a few topics, like just strength and barbell training for your athletes and your populations. How has that changed for you in the last five to ten years?
Mike Guadango: Well, I started off at DiFranco’s when we were all about the Westside special barbell exercises, you know? I don’t want to say we couldn’t see the forest from the trees, because that wasn’t true. Our goal was to get guys strong. I don’t want to say we measured strength from bench squat dead lift perspective, but that’s … we were big into Louie Simmons. Louie Simmons benched with bands and chains. Why? Well, he dealt with geared lifters. So, they were benching in shirts, and they were squatting in suits, so it was all about the lockout. Louie Simmons is, he’s pretty brilliant for his sport. The guy was revolutionary. That’s for his sport.
Mike Guadango: Are the bands and chains the best thing for building strength in regular athletes? Is that the best way to do it? Or what’s the difference between using bands and chains and not using bands and chains? If you get stronger, you get f***ing stronger. It doesn’t matter what you have on the bar, what is the goal? Why are we trying to get stronger? Are we trying to get stronger to improve strength? Are we trying to get stronger to improve flexibility? Are we trying to get stronger to improve mobility? Why are you using the strength? That’s my … I’ve been asking why a lot more lately, because unless you know your why, there’s no reason to be f***ing doing it.
Mike Guadango: Why are we adding bands? I have no problem adding bands to something. But if we don’t need to, we don’t need to. I’m not going to f***ing waste time setting something up if we could derive the same stimulus or adaptation from a lesser stimulus. Isn’t that the goal? Use as little stimuli as possible to yield the same adaptation? That’s what you’re supposed to do when it comes to either … even reprimanding your kids. Even yelling at them. You don’t need to yell at them, maybe you just give them a look. What are these athletes adapting to? What do you need to do? Let’s do the minimum effective dose. It’s coming real big now, like you want to be anti-fragile, and you want to expose them to a lot of stuff, but my gut … that’s another reason why I just don’t watch the internet.
Mike Guadango: I’m a lot more simplistic on my views on weight training now. It’s … I don’t want to say doesn’t matter, but Charlie Francis called it chicken soup. I mean, you can’t f*** up chicken soup. You throw in some chicken thighs, and you throw in some onions, and you throw in some carrots and whatever, right? And you got chicken soup. How much of what? Does it matter? It won’t make that big of a difference. How much better can chicken soup get? How much worse can it get? So as long as you’re not a total monkey and throwing s*** everywhere, you’ll be fine. Getting stronger is as easy as falling out of a boat and hitting water. Even the guy that cleans up the gym will get stronger, because you ever hear of farm boy strength? What do the farm boys do? They just threw hay. They did manual labor. It’s not that f***ing hard to get strong, unless you’re dealing with weight lifters or power lifters, let’s not over complicate s***. And I think that’s where it’s changed.
Mike Guadango: In which case, you want to add bands and chains, go right ahead. I don’t care. But, if you think you need to add bands and chains to get stronger, or if you’re not, you’re being irresponsible, that’s just asinine. I can get you stronger with just a regular barbell, or I could get you stronger just doing unilateral movements. Whatever is safer on the athlete, whatever is going to increase longevity, whatever is not going to drain their battery so they can’t practice. It’s the minimum effective dose so they can go out and actually practice and get better at their skill.
Joel Smith: You’re listening to the Just Fly Performance Podcast, brought to you by SimpliFaster.
Joel Smith: Yeah, I think that’s where it’s like … I love that quote by the way, the minimum I think, is one of the biggest things I’ve learned too, along the way. I just think it’s interesting … I think we just get so hyper focused and hyper zoomed in on one thing in lifting, like we get hyper zoomed in on VBT, we get hyper zoomed in on bands and chains, and hyper zoomed in on a barbell oriented periodization scheme, I think then we lose the ability to zoom out and then kind of see everything else in the training world.
Mike Guadango: Yeah. And also, we get hyper zoomed in on just a particular exercise in general. You get guys that like dead lifting or guys that like squatting, and that’s the only true measurement of full body strength or the only way to really get strong. What the hell’s the difference between a single leg squat and a double leg squat? If you get one leg strong, aren’t you getting both legs strong? Both legs strong? What are we working here? If I couldn’t do single leg squats, like a set of 10, with 70 pound dumbbells, then all of the sudden, I did a set of 10 with 80 pound dumbbells, well I got f***ing stronger, didn’t I? We’re splitting hairs here with so much stuff. And as long as there’s a reduction of injury, and an increase or maintenance of performance, depending on what the level of the athlete is, we’re doing our job.
Mike Guadango: Like availability. How available are these athletes? That’s the main thing. I have … Devin McCourty, he was one of the fastest guys in the NFL this year, he was clocked at over 20 or 22 miles an hour, whatever the hell it was. He was a top five fastest guy in the NFL. He’s 31. He’s had back injury, shoulder injuries, you name it. We do no VBT. I don’t do any velocity based training. I don’t track far speed. He don’t even squat.
Joel Smith: Don’t say that.
Mike Guadango: What are we doing here? We do some sprints, I mean yeah. That’s our velocity based training, I guess. We do some jumps. We do some throws, and I keep him healthy. But the goal is … because we don’t know enough, just stay the f*** out of their way. Let the athlete perform. Let’s not try to take over their training. Let’s try to enhance their life as best as we can. If they leave here feeling better, we’re doing our jobs better. If there’s a reduction in injury, and they can actually perform, we’re doing our jobs better. Kevin Love, when he had first started training with me, I had only worked with him four days before he ended up leaving for Cleveland.
Mike Guadango: In those four days, what do you think I did with whatever time NBA all star, NBA championship guy, first round draft pick, future hall of famer, what am in going to do with this guy to improve his performance? Are you kidding me? This is … he’s a stud already. What am I going to do? I’m going to allow him to feel better. After four days of working with me, he was working with a skills coach, and he started dunking. Skills coach came up to me and said, “I’ve been working with him for three, four years, he only dunks when he feels good.” And then, maybe five minutes later, he walked up to his skills coach, he says, “I feel like me again.” And he said, “I’ve never seen him look this good.”
Mike Guadango: Dude, that’s after four days. We did some stretching. We did some … we didn’t do anything outrageous, but I wasn’t loading him … we weren’t doing any cleans, we weren’t doing any squats, there was nothing outrageous going on. I allowed him to start feeling good. I increased his proprioception, I gave him a couple of cues on how to work, I gave him some good warm-up stuff, and he started feeling good. What is the goal? What are we trying to accomplish? Am I trying to get this athlete to run a four four? Even though every single time he runs a four four, he pulls his hamstring? Or am I trying to get him to run four five repeats, all day, every day, whatever the hell he wants? What is our goal? That’s the main question that you got to ask yourself with everything that you’re doing.
Joel Smith: Yeah. I couldn’t agree more. I love that you said that. I was reading … this was probably five, six months ago, a story of a coach who’s really well known, talking about working with NFL, I think it was an All-Pro several years running, and he was bragging that he had never squatted, I think over 225 in however many years. This coach had a big problem with it. I was like, “But isn’t that player doing an awesome job at his own minimum effective dose?” If you don’t have to squat this much, and you’re that good, aren’t you probably assisting your own longevity in a way, by not putting 400 pounds on your back? Or obviously I’m using kind of of a psychological mechanism. But even by drawing more weight than that.
Joel Smith: But there’s a beauty to the fact that … can’t we just respect the athlete who’s the awesome athlete and doesn’t have to necessarily use this one tool in a particular way to be as good as he is? I look at even like Kim Collins, the track guy from the Bahamas who ran like 999 at age 39 or 40 or something insane. That guy doesn’t lift, he just … he’s to me, the ultimate example of an athlete being an athlete who has the gifts. Who just has an island lifestyle, didn’t do too much probably by crushing weights for all those years, and he’s got that awesome … he’s still going. He’s still doing his thing. I’ve run into the trap myself as an athlete myself, of not doing the right things and seeing the repercussions plenty of times, it always hits home.
Mike Guadango: You and me both, absolutely. Absolutely.
Joel Smith: Yeah. I’m learning over time what it means to just … like you said, I feel like myself. And the best training I’ve done is stuff that gets me to feel like myself. At my age, it’s not a lifting … it’s not learning a new power lifting or Olympic lift technique. It’s usually something that’ll allow my body to move and flex and bend and twist and breathe in a manner that makes me feel like more like me.
Mike Guadango: Yeah.
Joel Smith: There’s a lot of innate power in just the way the human body returns energy to itself and uses the facial system, and if I’ve learned anything, it’s just … even the podcast I just did with Ben Patrick, the idea of building athletes almost from the foot, ankle and knee up, because if you just do all this hip dominant stuff, the power through those joints doesn’t follow suit, you become a different type of athlete over time.
Joel Smith: And I’m like, “Yeah, I’ve become a different type of athlete over time.” It’s just you have this lens, where you look at yourself in a different way, and you’re like, “Holy cow, I don’t want … ” I made the mistake, so hopefully my athletes don’t have to by the time they’re my age or whatever.
Mike Guadango: To reinforce more confirmation bias of this conversation, we had an athlete, a strength oriented athlete, I’m not going to say a name, because I don’t want to piss anyone off. He was an offensive lineman in the NFL for over 10 years. You ask any of his teammates, you say, “Oh that guy, not a big leg guy.” I worked with him for probably five to seven years, and I couldn’t count on one hand how many times I saw him put a bar on his back. This is an offensive lineman. That is the strength oriented position in the strength power sport. He would barely squat. And I don’t think when he squatted, he squatted more than 225. What are we doing here? And he was in the NFL for 12 years. A sport where the average career lasts three. And, he was good.
Mike Guadango: Are we serious here? What is the true measurement of the exercises we’re doing? Why are we doing them? Why are we so married to them? What are they really going to do? Those are the questions that really need to be asked.
Joel Smith: Yeah, exactly. I’m always on that continual source of that. I think it is important, because at the end of the day, you could deconstruct even a squat, and it’s like okay, to get … yes, you probably should fundamentally be able to have the general strength to be able to squat a certain amount of weight to play in the NFL. I mean, strength is specific though, too. Just learn the technique of the squat, obviously and the way your body conforms to it, because I look at it in the sense of like you watch athletes do the Hatfield squat. I’ve been on a kick where I’m like, “Okay, I’ll have my swimmers do some Hatfield squats for a little while, just so they can use their hands to control their torso,” because I’m thinking of this as more of a learning exercise for the torso and the trunk.
Joel Smith: When you’re in the water, you obviously have more control. You watch how that athlete progresses over time, is the athletes want to keep putting weight on the bar, and all of the sudden, now it’s something that’s fundamentally different, because of the technique to lift more weight. Yes, I can push my hips back and pull with my lats, and the bar goes up, but that doesn’t mean anything. That just means I pushed my hips back and used my lats to lift a bar. But that’s nothing compared to what you’re actually doing in your sport, the muscular recruitment that is occurring there.
Joel Smith: I’m not saying that there aren’t athletes who are certainly helped by a strength, who are weaker fundamentally, because there certainly are, but I just think that once we get to a certain point, and obviously this is a conversation that’s had the max strength conversation, but I just think it’s interesting to … I think if we saw more situations with what athletes really did, and I think it would be helpful to give us that lens when we look at the whole equation.
Mike Guadango: Yeah, absolutely. To be able to actually see what goes on, rather than what they post about on social media.
Joel Smith: Yeah, exactly. What actually goes on, I think. Because I heard a funny story about … well, I’ll just say I won’t necessarily name … I almost feel like I could, but there was a really well known football player who was working with a coach who didn’t really like weights, and he used a lot of alternative means to train this guy, and they made a big deal of it. But, I guess the guy was actually kind of lifting weights behind the coach’s back or something like that. It’s just kind of funny, like what is reality and what is perception? Not like who knows if you’ve been lifting weights, it’s probably more of a mental thing at his age and position, stuff like that.
Joel Smith: It’s just always interesting to see what actually went on for this athlete. I wanted to ask you as well, because this is something that I think about a lot, is as you’ve progressed through your career, you’ve been through so much in the time you’ve been in the field, but what do you view, and obviously working with James Smith, too and Global Dynamics, but what do you view the role of the … I put it in quotes in my question, “physical preparation coach” or you can call it strength coach. What’s your view of that role? And what would that role be in the perfect world?
Mike Guadango: I think it’s obsolete. I can barely read. I’m not that smart of a person naturally. I’m pretty good at math, but for English, English Lit type s***, Dude, I can’t f***ing read. I was in reading classes pretty much my whole damn life. I was able to grasp this stuff from a book. It’s really not that hard. There’s no reason why a coach can’t learn what we know in a decent amount of time. If an actually skills coach was able to learn and apply what we do, we’re done. There’s no reason why wide receivers coach can’t put his guy through some weight work. I mean, outside of physios, some therapists and stuff that’s pretty specialized for rehabilitation, but from a general standpoint, I don’t think there’s a need for a strength coach. I think it’s a bulls*** position nowadays. Or it should be, anyway, because the position coaches, the skills coaches, they should be able to acquire this information with relatively little effort. They really should.
Mike Guadango: I think what may end up happening is, strength coaches are going to start becoming skills coaches. That’s kind of where it should be. Then all of the sudden, the skills coach … it should be like track and field. Track and field coaches handle all their guys. Why the hell can’t a football coach? The only problem is, majority of athletic coaches are former athletes. Majority of football coaches are former football players. Majority of football players have CTE, right?
Joel Smith: Yeah.
Mike Guadango: What are we dealing with? We’re not dealing with the cream of the crop when it comes to … typically when it comes to any kind of mental capacity. So, it’s limited. Whereas if you get a different group, different population, actually taking in these roles, these high paying roles, these high paying jobs, all of the sudden, becomes less of a need for the minute stuff like strength coaches. As you learn more and more, strength is just one part of the puzzle. It doesn’t matter how big, strong, fast you are, if you overload these kids, they’re going to get hurt.
Mike Guadango: If you’re a head coach, and your team sucks, and you say, “We might be the worst team, but we’re going to be the best conditioned team,” and all you do is run these f***ing guys, they’re all going to get hurt, and they’re going to get worse. If you’re a coach, and your team is awesome, and you say, “Not only are we going to be the best team, but we’re going to be the best conditioned team,” and you run them into the ground, they’re going to get hurt, and then you have no team.
Mike Guadango: There needs to be a change, and I think that change is going to be making its way from the strength coach up. Not the other way around, because these people don’t seem to want to evolve.
Joel Smith: Yeah. I’m glad you made that point, actually, because … I will say it’s an audacious statement, but what you … I agree with you in the sense of yes, in the perfect world, not being any offense to anyone in the sports performance industry, but in the perfect world, yes if the skill coach just read Easy Strength, by Dan John and Pavel, and just had the basic technique down, I do not believe it would … and could see the integration of our time, because now you don’t just get the kids from the weight room, and you’re working with them, you put them through whatever, and now you directly are getting … you’re managing through your intuition, and if you have any data, or you track anything, but you’re directly managing the whole process.
Joel Smith: I know I spent time as a track coach, and I obviously went small school. I write the whole weight lifting program. When I was writing the whole program, we spent a lot less time in the weight room than we did when I was a strength coach for track, respectively. Because I knew exactly what my athletes needed, and I knew after 30 minutes, we don’t need to be in there anymore. You can go take a nap or whatever, get extra rest. I don’t think my athletes were doing that, sadly, but in a perfect world, they would have got extra sleep. If it was a true high performance environment. And not necessarily a D-3 liberal arts school.
Joel Smith: I know exactly what you mean there, but I do think … I agree with what you’re saying in that it is probably going to come from the strength coaching side of the industry. I don’t know … I look at … and maybe it’s just because our field is so competitive. If you’re the type of person who has a holistic performance mindset on your body, then maybe you also are wanting to be an innovator and a dot connector, and I know several people I’ve had on this show, and colleagues who are in the field, who are connecting those dots into skill acquisition or who already have done that, and doing so from a point that you have to just connect everything.
Joel Smith: So anyways, I kind of agree with you. I’m interested to see where the whole thing goes, with Sean Myszka movement and the people who are in the perceptive reactive, and who are starting to really extrapolate those spaces out, because you watch what they’re doing, and you’re like, “Oh, that’s sports.” And then people criticize that though, they’re like, “Oh, stay in your lane,” and duh, duh, duh. If we stay in our lane though, then I don’t know, it just seems like the ceiling is … it’s okay, here’s the ceiling, and if you stay in our lane, what are we … I just don’t ever feel like we’re going to be able to push past that ceiling. You are basically relegated to what someone had said … the strength coach can’t help you win the championship, but it can help you not lose it. Like they’re getting hurt and stuff.
Joel Smith: I get that, I think that’s very important and relevant, but if you want to push the performance ceiling up, you have to get into that stuff. You have to. Otherwise, you’re stuck on the Bondarchuk pyramid. You got the SPs and GEs towards the bottom. You’re stuck on the bottom layer, basically.
Joel Smith: There is something to making that bottom layer cool and relevant, and getting on … like you said, an athlete back to feeling like themself, and I’ve really found that there is a lot there, and a lot more than I tend to think there is there, but I just think it’s really profound what you’re saying there. I think it’ll be interesting to see how the skill acquisition, and from the physical prep side continues to manifest itself.
Mike Guadango: Yeah, Dude. Think about it in the sense of loading. Your weight lifting sessions when you were the track coach were significantly less, because you saw the loading that occurred. You saw the fatigue that occurred. Whereas if you’re just in the weight room, it’s like, “All right, come on. Get your s*** in. We got three sets of 10 lunges. We got to do three sets of six eccentric squats, and then we got to get our glute ham raises. I don’t want you pulling hamstrings.”
Mike Guadango: Meantime, if you’re the wide receivers coach, and you see that your guy was not only doing route running, but then they also had him on special teams, and he just ran seven 100s with 30 seconds rest, you’re like, “What the hell are we doing?” High intensity, and then he got trucked every freaking time. What are we doing? Get in the weight room, let’s do something that makes you not want to kill yourself, and then we get out.
Mike Guadango: Whereas if you’re the strength coach, you got to be the f***ing hard a**, because there’s the separation. That’s why it’s important for the skills coaches to actually be the ones managing the load, because … and to know how to manage the load, because they’re deciding the fate of the players. It needs to be done that way. The head coach, the offensive, whoever’s in charge of loading, needs to know physical preparation. Has to know it. And has to know the game.
Mike Guadango: The only people that seem to be wanting to make that kind of commitment, seem to be the strength coaches. They need to make the jump now, a lot of my guys that want to get involved in sports, I tell them to become sport coaches. All my strength conditioning guys, I say, “Become sport coaches, because you already have the interest to be a strength conditioning coach, so you’ll always learn that, but become a sport coach, that way you know how to hire, you know exactly how to load, you know how to monitor, you know how to do absolutely everything associated with the sport.”
Mike Guadango: What James talks about in the Governing Dynamics of Sport, is the concept of a general contractor. You ask someone who owns a construction company who does absolutely all the work, he can do the carpentry, he can do the plumbing, he can do the electrical work, even though he licenses out for a lot of the stuff, he’s capable of doing it, because now he can truly oversee things and know how they’re done. Whereas the head football coach, he doesn’t know anything about physical therapy, all he knows about physical preparation, is that his guys need to squat, and they need to run stadiums, and they need to run 110s, because that’s how tough guys are made. What do they know about the psychology of sport? They know absolutely nothing.
Mike Guadango: Whereas if you put that guy into the construction setting, all of the sudden, he’s the GC, and the building falls down, and everyone’s wondering why. You get away with a lot more in sport because humans are very plastic and we heal, than you do in any kind of engineering. That’s what James talks about in the Governing Dynamic of Sport, that the absolute ignorance that occurs in a sport.
Joel Smith: Yeah. I think when we section things out so much, it’s bound to happen, that there’s a lot of ignorance left out on what’s going on on the other side of your specific job, be it sports medicine, strength and conditioning, the actual sport itself, which is by far where the athletes are spending the majority of their time, and I agree with you. I do think that if a actual sport coach was the load manager, because again, that’s what you are in track and field. It would be hard to imagine, if I’m the track coach, the strength coach telling me the loads that my athletes should be … again, not that … I think it’s awesome, like you said, that strength and conditioning is picking up that hat to say, or saying, “I’ll do this, I’ll do this load management,” and it’s going to help sport evolve through that way and eventually it will manifest itself in a way that I think will be optimally efficient.
Joel Smith: Just even hearing younger coaches, younger sport coaches these days are taking to that stuff, and really, from what I hear, very well, compared to the older coaches, and using the load management and monitoring. I do think that that’s evolving in that way for now. So, I think it’s awesome that … eventually, it’s going to become more efficient and effective, as with anything over time, but looking at things from a track and field perspective, it totally makes sense to me, if the strength coach was telling me my loads I should do on the track, as the track coach … obviously if you’re a track coach, you have to know that stuff, at least you’d think you have to know that stuff. There’s a lot of people who I think still are behind the eight ball, but most good track coaches … all good track coaches know load.
Joel Smith: So, it’s and interesting perspective on … and it’ll be cool to see how people like Sean Mishka and Michael [inaudible 01:07:31] and James Smith, US Strength. They’re continuing to kind of push that forward, because I think they are. I think people are starting to notice and see that. I love seeing that stuff. I love seeing too, if you warm up with specific directed perceptive reactive work, those coaches understand that that was a big part of the training. That … I’ve even done stuff with … I’ve even had my tennis team, in the off season, play a different sport. We’ll play basketball for 30 minutes and then just lift weights for 20`. I was like, “That was a way better workout than if we lifted weights for 50.” Just the engagement and the crossing of skills, and then we lift what we needed to lift. It’s just how the session’s packaged. I could go on this forever, I’m sure. It’s a good perspective, and I’m interested to see how the field evolves in that route.
Joel Smith: Mike, I had one last question for you here, and that’s … you talked about movement training with your athletes. You working with pro, high level athletes. Obviously, with any athlete, right? But what’s your foundations of movement training for these guys? How do you … what’s some of your core tenets of getting them to feel … to basically be a better human? To feel like themself? To be the best mover and athlete that they can be, and what you’ve learned in the field?
Mike Guadango: It all depends. I’m really not married to anything specifically. I kind of just go with what works. I’ll ask the athlete some questions. I’ll watch them perform some basic stuff. I’ll watch them walk, and see if there’s any restrictions. I’ll watch them do some squats, and some body weight lunges, maybe some push-ups, some band pull aparts, and rows, something like that. And, I’ll kind of get a feel for where the restrictions are, and see … and ask them, “Hey, what hurts? What doesn’t hurt? What feels good? What doesn’t feel good?” And then honestly, I kind of just mobilize and open up those restricted areas, and then we just … we’ll do … on my website, not my website, my YouTube page that … yeah, on my YouTube page, I have a hip circuit, a lunge circuit, a scap circuit and a shoulder circuit that I put guys through.
Mike Guadango: Basic stuff. It’s a ground based hip circuit that’s a rehab 101 thing. You’ve got some forward lunges, side lunges, reverse lunges, front cross lunges, and some of my guys can’t do front cross lunges because they have broken feet or whatever, and it bothers them, so we won’t do that.
Mike Guadango: Lateral rays, front rays, reverse flys, flys, pullovers, side pull downs, basic stuff. Hitting the shoulder from every angle. Scaps, protraction, retraction, elevation, depression. It’s really as simple as that. Those are basic movements that I’ll have guys do, and then maybe load them. If they’re a movement based athletes like running based athletes, we’ll do some side shuffles, some back pedals, and then some forward running as well. We’ll do some resisted running, depending on who they are. It all depends on how they’re moving.
Mike Guadango: If I see an issue with one of the movements, I’ll cut it, and then we’ll address the issue, and then if we can … if we can address the issue, we address it. We spend time addressing that issue. If not, then we just move on, and we do something else.
Mike Guadango: It all depends. What they do, I do all auto regulation. All my training sessions are auto regulated. Nothing’s really … I don’t want to say nothing’s written down, because everything that they’ve done is recorded, but prior, we have a general idea of how we want the session to go, but to bring up Kevin Love again, I’ll train him, I’ll show up there, and he’ll say, “Hey, I had a photo shoot earlier today, and I’m f***ing exhausted.”
Mike Guadango: We were supposed to have a high intense workout. Clearly, that isn’t going to happen that day. The six month program that I just wrote out in advance for him, just hit the s***ter, because of one day, one setback. So, it’s all about being a plan B. What I do, is I have a general outline that I go with guys, and I just auto regulate from there, and whatever … that’s the point of knowing all different exercises, right? Is so you have different menu items. So hey I wanted to hit some kind of … I wanted to hit some kind of quad dominant exercise here, and some kind of posterior chain dominant exercise here, and some kind of scap dominant exercise here, well this seems to hurt, let’s try this one. All right, that seems to hurt. Let’s try that one. That’s essentially what my sessions are comprised of.
Joel Smith: Yeah. I like how you just kind of have that rotating menu of things to work through until the body just … there’s nothing … I think it’s just very powerful to say, “Okay, that feels good.”
Joel Smith: “Okay, let’s do that one.” It’s simple, but it’s effective. I even like … one of the rabbit holes I’m getting down is biofeedback, and strength training. So, doing like Dave Dellanave, I think that’s how you say his last name, you can be presented with three types of dead lifts, like a Jefferson, a Sumo regular, just do the one that basically feels the best, and elicits the best short term mobility increase, that takes you a threat, and just roll with that one on the day.
Joel Smith: Just listen to the body. I’ve felt like there’s a lot of power in that. Even if it’s the simplest of movements, like a dead lift or whatever, a good artist can get a lot out of it.
Mike Guadango: Yeah. And not to say that I’m not … that I’m going to be anti … I don’t want people to think that I’m anti-squat, anti-bench, anti-dead weight. I had an NFL guy and a seven year vet in the other day, and he goes, “Hey, can we hit some squats?” Yeah. His structure could support that. He was big, he was strong. I had zero problems doing it.
Mike Guadango: So, what do we do? We did some control eccentric squats. I think he worked his way up to 355, 365, something like that. He did them for six reps. I have zero problem. That’s a decent amount of weight, especially for eccentrics as well. I have no problem doing that. I’m not married to one specific exercise and I don’t hate any specific exercise. I just pick something and go with it.
Joel Smith: Yeah. I’m glad you mentioned that too, because it just … I think it expands the artistry of what you do, and having a lot of … you just got to pick the right tool for the right job. And it takes a while to get there, and it takes some wisdom to get there. It would be cool to have almost like the evolution of the average evolution of in the physical prep industry, it’s almost like, I do feel like it goes from a lift centric model to an athlete centric model over time.
Joel Smith: But that athlete centric model is infinite. That’s what we’re talking about. Maybe that’s it. Maybe that’s where we get to the point we’re like, “Man, there is so much out there.” As soon as you put … and then as well as just understanding that the fundamental human being who is wired to be a good athlete, what they’re capable of, even without our help in a sense. It’s just cool to sit back and respect that.
Joel Smith: Mike, man I’m out of time for this morning. It was awesome having you on, awesome hearing your thoughts. Some heavy stuff, some stuff that I’m actually trying not to think about it kind of as I go, because I’ll probably be thinking about it today. Just really heavy ideas for direction in the industry, and to just give the athletes and sports performance, or sports in general, the best it can have. I appreciate your time and your thoughts, man.
Mike Guadango: Thank you, thank you so much for having me on. I’m sorry it took so long for me to get on.
Joel Smith: No. It’s all good. It was worth the wait. I appreciate it, man. Hopefully we can talk in person sometime. That would be fantastic.
Mike Guadango: Yeah, definitely. And just to close with this. I don’t want anyone to get offended or pissed off, or aggravated with anything that I say, because I just think out loud, and I’m going to … I’ll likely go back on things that I said in five years, 10 years from now. I don’t know … I know that I don’t know anything, so that kind of gives me the openness to change my mind on s***. So, just don’t … I don’t want people to think anything I say is gospel, or that I think that anything that I say is gospel either. I think that’s the most important thing that people need to take away, is we just have no freaking idea. At the end of the day, we could test all we want, and we don’t know for 100% certainty on anything.
Joel Smith: Yeah. To put our ego out of the way and ask why is just fundamental. And to be able to … and conversations like this that stir up a lot of why questions. I love having these. Thank you again, Mike, really appreciate it, man.
Mike Guadango: Thanks, brother.
Joel Smith: All right. That does it for another episode, and again talk with Mike, just so authentic. It was almost, we were hoping to do this show in person, but in some senses, it’s almost like we were. So, I hope to have Mike back on in the future. He’s doing great things. Check out his … if you’re not familiar with what he’s doing, definitely stay in touch with him on his Instagram feeds, and YouTube. I think Mike is really serving the industry well in his own evolution, and going to acupuncture school. I’m excited to see what’s next for him.
Joel Smith: If you listen to this show often, or if it was your first episode, either way, and you want to really help us out in getting this message out and what we’re doing out there, I’d really appreciate if you left us a rating review on I-Tunes, Stitch or whatever. I should probably ask for that at the beginning, because I’m getting these partial episode, how many people turn off at the end of the episode and go on to the next one, which I do all the time myself. I don’t often listen to these things.
Joel Smith: That being said, if you could leave us a rating review on I-Tunes, Stitch or whatever, would totally appreciate that. Also, our sponsor SimpliFaster.com, awesome company doing great things, informationally, through the products they offer, we really appreciate them. Yeah. I think that does it for this week’s show. That was an awesome one. We will see you guys next week with another great guest. Have a wonderful week.
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