There's an exercise you might have seen me do where it looks like I am trying to break my back, trying to make my guts come out of the back of my spine where I put literally 600 pounds on my back and I try to squat it down. Now my max is five hundred pounds. Why am I trying to squat 600? We're gonna answer this question. Today, we're gonna talk about something called we actually haven't used this term a lot, accentuated eccentrics.

I think we usually call it overloaded eccentrics nowadays. Super maximal eccentrics, the third name.

I just call it super maximal lifts because it's super max or I call it super maximal concentric.

Yeah.

That's really what it is.

Super maximal. Above super saiyan four, if you will.

Yeah. It's beyond Ben, do you even know what that is?

I know it's anime.

You you've got some research to do. You have some homework required homework. Also, I'm watching demon slayer season five right now, and it's so glorious. Isaiah, I know you don't watch demon slayer, but you should. It's all about out there.

Dude, it's all about training and improving. It should be a requirement that if you wanna be great at something, you're you have to watch Dragon Ball Z the whole way through, including fillers. Fillers.

At dunk camp?

It's not like 1,200 episodes or something like that?

No. That's like one piece.

Oh, okay. I remember at dunk camp because there's a lot of people all the pro dunkers have just started talking about anime for some reason during the q and a. And at one point, Andy's like, wait. Pause for a second. He's like, how many of you guys here watch anime?

And then, like, 70% of the room is their hand.

Success leaves clues.

Yeah. We're gonna reverse engineer it. Anyways, so

We're gonna reverse out the concentric today, if you will.

That's we are. I love it. I love it. I love this. And by that, I mean, I hate it.

So let's let's get into it. Let's first say what is specifically considered an accentuated eccentric and then in research, what is it? What is it called in research?

Yeah, it's usually like accentuate eccentric or eccentric overload.

Perfect. And what does that mean?

Find what eccentric remember, a lot of the guys out here don't know anything about anything.

Before I even before I even do that, I'm just gonna say this. Eccentric training is so important for getting more explosive. It's probably one of the largest determinants of your success as an explosive power athlete. That's how important eccentric strength is. If you don't have eccentric strength, you're probably a dog shit slob athlete, and developing eccentric strength will make you not a dog shit slob athlete.

And better athletes have better eccentric strength.

So I just

wanna say all of that.

Before we forget, if you don't wanna be a dog poop athlete that wants to do eccentric training

Trying to swear less?

Go to go to thpstrength.com. We currently have a Black Friday deal. I think at the time of this writing, all our spots are gonna be filled up. So you're stuck with just a 50% discount. Yeah.

Go to the website and check it out.

Alright. Anyways, so forget.

We always forget to plug THP at the

Yeah. But what that means, eccentric means it is the muscle lengthening. The muscle fascicle is lengthening or the muscular tennis. This is maybe where it gets a little bit different. Actually, Ben, I want to hear what your thoughts are on this.

So what I was taught in school is that there was no such thing as like winding theory, which winding theory now is like the muscular tendinous unit is lengthening. But whether it's the muscle or the tendon is, like, debated depending on the context of the exercise. So in research now, do they delineate between this, or is it just, like, the fascicle is lengthening, or is the muscular tendinous unit?

Like the like the eccentric action itself?

Yeah, like when they talk about do they say eccentric muscle action research or what do they typically say?

So usually it's kind of more well accepted that it's like the MTU is lengthening. So it's like the muscle and the tendon together is lengthening. But they are one or the other. It's just like an eccentric action of the MTU.

So that's what I've always, I started to say is like it's an eccentric joint action because it's hard to actually delineate whether it's the muscle fascicle, meaning the contractile component or the tendon. You would need an MRI, ultrasound, probes on it to tell. And even then there's still limitations like, to my understanding, ultrasound only does the surface of it. And you can't really see if it's, I mean, you definitely can't see if it's the fibril or it's the actual like, you know, fascicle sliding by each other. I mean, you would need microscopic lenses to be able to tell.

And from what I've seen, do it outside, like, outside the bodies in vivo. Is that right?

In vivo. And then in vitro is like the petri dish. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. So it's like but it's not humans. Usually, it's like a rat or something like that. Like a rat Achilles tendon or something ridiculous.

Because from what I know based on my friends who have done research on tendons, specifically the Achilles, it's almost impossible to anchor the heel in the heel cup and not have it slide, making it almost impossible to get good metrics, like good data on it. Like, it's just like, if your heel slides one centimeter, that could be the that is a massive difference when you're talking about elongation and a tendon. And it it just throws all the data off. And that was a big issue that they had, and I've heard that several times. And then, yeah, it's hard to, like, find people that are strong enough in research as well that are able to, like, truly elongate the tendon till not reasonable amounts, but, like, as much as Isaiah or myself or Ben probably would, I would say.

So, Ben, what are your thoughts on that statement? Do agree, disagree? I mean, you're you're more in the know of the research, which is why I'm I'm

About, like, how accurate are the measurements?

Yeah. Just, like, accuracy and, like, you know, the the populations that we're seeing. I mean, you know, I don't think

that Yeah. That's a probably the biggest one.

Not a leading athlete.

So Sorry. So, yeah. Isn't there

a new measuring oh, go ahead. Finish what you're saying. I thought you were done.

No. Go ahead. No. No. Go ahead.

Isn't there a new measuring system? Like, my friend Gaspers was saying that they have a new kind of MRI technique to see the difference in tendon length, but I'm not sure.

Yeah. I'm also blanking on that one. I tried to look that up because I listened to that podcast. I tried to look that up, but so far I've just seen they usually use an ultrasound probe and they just like look at the the muscle fascicle and the tendon aponeurosis, which is a continuation of the tendon within the muscle. That's where the actual muscle attaches to the tendon.

Like that's how it pulls on the tendon. And in terms of accuracy, now what I've seen is some researchers kind of account for that heel slide. I couldn't tell you the exact way they do that, but they are aware of that it's happening. But also, like you said, the populations they study are like usually just like recreationally active males or like maybe like lightly resistance trained. So like how this actually operates on an elite athlete, we can just guess.

So it's not we we don't really know.

Which is normal. I mean, in my experience, the best thing that you can do is get as close as possible when you're looking at research and then just try to understand the trends. Right? Like, when you get a body multiple bodies of evidence across different populations, odds are that's probably going to indicate that's also the case with elite athletes. Right?

It's like there's an enormous amount of evidence that is indicating that this probably also works on elite athletes. I think one common thing that guys do is they're like, well, proved it because I'm one person that did it. Like, if someone says they prove something, I'm like, you're an idiot. You you don't know what you're talking about. It's always supported.

It's one example.

It's proven.

It's always supported or it has evidence. If you say it's proven, then like this is it's proven. We've we've proved it. It only takes one example to disprove your proof. That's straight math right there.

Like, you probably learned that in in geometry. And that's why things are supported. It's very hard to get something proven. That all said. So eccentrics, concentric is the up phase, the muscle muscular tennis unit is shortening.

Eccentric is the down phase, muscular tennis unit is lengthening. Isometric means they're staying the same length. Now accentuated, as I said, eccentrics are very important because you have to stop yourself from going down before you go up. Meaning if I'm accelerating to the ground, I have to stop myself before I start moving upwards, which is really, really important. Right?

If I for example, if I'm a high jumper and I go into the takeoff and I have a negative one or negative, 0.5 meters per second downwards into the ground, I have to and then my horizontal momentum is, like, seven meters per second. I have to stop that momentum before I can start traveling upwards and over the bar. So if I don't have eccentric strength and that's what that requires, the ability to to stop that force, I'm not gonna be able to do that effectively. Another thing that eccentric strength does is it allows us to have tendon elongation and to actually stretch the tendon more effectively. Because if you're really strong eccentrically, then the tendon is going to lengthen, and tendons are faster than muscles at storing and releasing energy, but in turn force.

And there's a connection there. Isaiah's figured it out with derivatives once with David. I don't remember what the actual equation is. But then so the stronger you are eccentrically, the better you can stop yourself, the better you can use tendons, and you can use that elastic energy to propel yourself either down the track or into the air. So that's why centric strength is so important.

Now on top of this, newer concepts are coming out, which is Ben and I have talked about a lot. And Isaiah, we've also talked about it as well. But that is what we would call like winding theory, as Rolf calls it, the idea that muscles are strong enough that they might actually shorten or stay the same length while the tendon is actually lengthening, which in terms of the cross bridging and the nervous system and things, kind of like is in this gray area, because it's like, like, internally, brain is probably not saying, I'm gonna do a, like, eccentric or concentric or isometric contraction. All you're thinking is like push. Right?

But the muscle action is gonna do something different as a result. So that's maybe, like, a gray area. I guess, Ben, I wanna hear your thoughts on that. Like, when you think about the research on eccentric strength and then you kind of are blending this winding theory into that, how do you how do you kinda rationalize or make sense of everything collectively? Do you think it's only this like quasi isometric kind of condition or do you think that it's, maybe it's some segments are doing one thing or some segments are doing another or do you have any thoughts on that?

Yeah, so we'll first tackle the filament winding theory that has to deal with titin, which this protein in your cross bridges, it attaches to the Z disc of the sarcomere and myosin or the m line of myosin. And in the presence of calcium ions, which is what happens when you're contracting your muscles, like your muscles need calcium ions to like initiate contraction, titin will bind one of its segments, the n2a segment specifically, will bind to actin. And as you go through that eccentric contraction, if this is actin and this is myosin and actin is being pulled away from myosin and titin is kind of in the middle, it will stretch titin. And so Titan has three different segments. It has the okay.

There's gonna be some hard science. If anybody has any questions.

I'm gonna pull this up real quick. We talked about this the other day.

Yeah. Think I sent you a figure from from Beardsley. By the way, show us Beardsley. Yeah.

Here's this can you see this diagram right here?

Yeah. Yeah. So the little dot is the N2A segment. That's what binds to actin in the presence of calcium ions. And the segment we want to stretch is that yellow segment.

That's the PEVK segment of Which

is this image right here?

Yep, yep. So we wanna, so that's the segment of Titan that has kind of like those elastic properties that can act like stiff, like that can be stiff and storm release elastic energy. And the other segment on to the left, which you can't really see is the IG domain. And we don't really care about that one. That's just more just like really stretchy, doesn't really store a lot of elastic energy.

So we want to stretch the PEVK segment and we have to do that through basically having a lot of muscular activity. So that can be with the supramaximal eccentrics like we talked about, or it can be with like a fast eccentric like you might see like apply or anything.

So anyway, so that's Here's elastic I band region stretching, right? This where I don't like you didn't see that. Oh, you can't can you see this?

Barely, but yeah, essentially, sure. So

the Titan, this is the elastic material inside the muscle, correct?

Yeah, yep. And it helps kind of just support the sarcomeres. It basically just helps the sarcomeres stop like not burst from all the forces essentially. So like it creates passive mechanical tension. Like that's why in your undergrad exercise science class you might see that little curve of like you have like your different circumure lengths and then active tension peaks at one point, and then it kind of drops down once you get on the descending limb of the length tension relationship, and then it peaks back up again as passive mechanical tensions developed.

And that's also fun fact, that's also how you get the increase in fascicle length. Like I've talked about that before on my channel, like that's how the when you develop passive mechanical tension, that's how you that stimulates longitudinal hypertrophy like adding sarcomeres in series to potentially increase contraction velocity. Anyways.

Right. Sorry. So how does this relate to increasing the tendon length? Yeah. In a fast explosive plyometric like movement.

Yeah. So Titan is a little bit different from the tendon. So the winding film in theory is essentially Titan contributing to force production during elastic activities. It's stretching that PEVK segment and then that's releasing elastic energy. Kind of like what we talked about a couple weeks ago, John.

So there's two ways to kind of wind tighten. So one is through an eccentric contraction where the actin is displacing away from the myosin and that's kind of stretching the PVK segment. It's also winding a little bit or which is this was the really interesting part that I learned was it can also be an isometric action where actin and myosin are staying relatively the same. I guess you could say the same like, orientation, but actin is like spinning to hold the cross bridges and that winds that titan.

This blue one would be spinning and that would be winding.

Yeah. So it's winding titan. So that's why it's called the winding filament theory because as the because during an isometric muscle action yeah. So during an isometric muscle action, keep in mind, like cross bridges are still breaking apart and they're still reforming. So as those cross bridges reform Example

right here.

There we go. Yes. There we go. There's a perfect picture.

I read

that exact study. Yep. So you can see how the PVK segment is winding on Acton as the muscle is essentially gonna be relatively isometric, and that's what's happening when we jump for the most part. So we're breaking like, if you're landing from a depth jump, you know, it's mostly breaking. It's not gonna be a, like, true eccentric contraction of the muscle because you need to break.

So you develop a a lot of force through isometric muscle actions, and then Titan's gonna wind on actin really quickly. And then when you go to your concentric phase, your propulsive phase, then it'll unwind like a spring. This is the

this is the winding right here. This is the stretchy stretching. That's

the winding.

So that's like the down phase or the musculature lengthening and then it unwinds. Okay. So that was a lot of information, but hopefully the diagrams helped you guys. If not, go back, rewatch us a couple times. I gave you a lot of different studies here even

just that's So the winding film theory essentially. It's just the winding of Titan, and then it's releasing stored elastic energy.

So then let's talk about how this okay. So so that is an example of muscles that are functioning either isometrically or eccentrically. Right? I guess you're lengthening Titan, but the muscle and the way Mison and Actin is working is not definitively, like because it can rotate, Actin can rotate, or it can actually lengthen. So there's like some some kind of differences there.

A

little nuance. Yeah.

Of like, isometric and eccentric during fast activity. But when it comes to actually understanding what makes the tendon lengthen, do you do you know or do you have any ideas? I I wanna hear your thoughts on this that, like, what specifically is gonna get the tendon to to lengthen? Is it force? Is it velocity?

Is it the combo of both? What do you think? What do you what do you think?

Combo of both. So it's essentially to get the tendon to lengthen, the muscle has to stay relatively the same length. So you need a high force or high velocity, which can create a high force like once you like touch down your plant leg on a two foot jumper or if you jump off lot.

Alright. We're we're twisting. Acton's rotating around. It's stretching tight.

Well, that's Titan though. That's not necessary. No. I know that.

But it is possible that that is happening.

Yes. Yes. Yes. So you're you're you're kinda getting a two for one combo because you're getting the

I'm But saying is

getting the s you're getting the series also component, and then Titan's kind of the Right. Pec, the Exactly. Right. Per about that.

By the way, in evidence, the SEC is by far more a contributor.

And some are even saying that Titan is now SEC. So it actually might be

I would agree with that. Yeah. I would agree with that. Anyways, enough enough about the tissue paper surrounding muscles. Let's let's so the muscle's functioning eccentrically, isometrically, whatever.

One of the two you think. Right? Or is it mostly ice do you okay. Let me here. Maybe this is a more clear, concise question.

Do you think that during a fast movement, like sprinting in the gastroc and soleus, that you're getting this winding to happen in the muscle and the tendon is lengthening as as a result, mostly? That's what I think as well. Alright. So let me ask you this in jumping. In Isaiah jumping, do you think that his quad at touchdown is mostly winding, or do you think that it's, like, actually lengthening?

I think it's winding for like 90% of it. So like you're coming in with a high speed, you're hitting the, like, a heel on the ground with a plant leg. It is that's a pretty high braking force. Like it's a high p force, and you're essentially gonna have to brake like right away because gravity and like gravity plus your momentum is going to send you down regardless. So you're gonna have so you're gonna probably hit your 90 degree knee like knee bend position, because of gravity forcing you down.

So you're probably gonna lengthen a little bit at the beginning, like a very small yielding phase, and then you're gonna break. And the breaking part is your eccentricity force development. That's like, that's the muscle punching isometrically, and that's what really stretches the tendon.

Okay. So here's my here's my next question. Do any weight room exercises rotate, act, and amaze, and do you think?

Yeah. So that's where, like, the super maximal eccentric the super maximal eccentrics would come into We know as you add Look

at that. See, we all brought it back, boys. You thought this wasn't

going That's why we do them. You gotta shift the whole force velocity curve. And you get so many coaptations.

So now in the weight room, you're saying if you're doing this 600 pound lower, you're saying you think that it's rotating at that point?

Some to to some extent. So you have to initially yield because, like, I like, Zay could probably raise 600 pounds in, a quarter squat. But, like, once he gets that, like below that quarter squat position now you're probably like You're so you're just killing.

Yeah.

Exactly. So you initially yield and then you literally lose to gravity. Like he's probably trying to push up against the bar. He can't do it. So he's so that's when you're getting the isometric muscle action.

That's when you're getting the lengthening of the tendon for like stiffness adaptations. That's when you're getting the winding of titan and titan would probably regardless be able to increase its stiffness because it is it is mechanoreceptive. If it's stretching it's probably going to have the chemoreceptors to signal adaptation, it'll increase its stiffness over time. Like we know it's through maximal eccentrics, increased heightened stiffness, We know it increases like connective tissue stiffness, like your fascia, like your perimesum, endomesum, that kind of stuff.

Again, PEC, we're following that's PEC.

Yeah, that would be the PEC. Titan may or may not be PEC. It could be SCC, it doesn't really matter.

But do we see the tendon having adaptation in the fibrils as a result as well?

Yeah, supramaxial eccentrics are probably the best thing you can do to increase your attentiveness. Like we're seeing trends in research. It's not necessarily proven or like super supportive, we're seeing Proven.

Proven. Did you say proven?

I said not proven. Yeah, no, it's somewhat supported or like trending towards the basically, the more force you're lowering with or the more force the muscle is producing, the more stretch you're getting with the tendon, and, like, that's gonna induce the adaptation.

True. Even anecdotally, we like, every time we put someone through cycle of Superman from eccentrics, jump higher. Like, it it feels I feel like I sim I respond similarly to that as when I do playoffs as well. Like, it, like, it just it feels specific, and we see it improving vertical.

And they they jump higher, and they also I've at least I personally found that it's really helped my tendon health. Like, I can lower a heavy ass weight. Yes. Yes. And I'm like, my tendons feel real like, I remember the first eccentric cycle I did with you guys way back when, like, you know, four or five months in the training.

I was like, man, my tendons feel great. Even though, like, the workout sucked because it was, like, lowering 120% of my max, but it was, like, but my tendons felt really good. That helps. Because you're you're you're getting that stiffness adaptation.

Yeah. I saw I saw the same thing because when I did it last year I mean, I've been dealing with, tendinopathy at the greatest recanter for, what, four years now. And every time I've ever done a cycle of super maximal eccentrics, it feels great. Like, I would

I think the caveat is, like, during it, it fucking hurts. And then, like, the next day, like, during it, it hurts, and you're like, I'm really doing damage here.

Most second caveat is you can't go in it really messed up either.

Yes.

And

Like, if you're not if you if you can't even handle no regular squatting, it might make your tendon worse. But if you're at that kind of tweener spot of, like,

you know Like, you're helping enough train

if you're helping enough to train and jump, like, I think it can help.

And the last one would be yeah. Okay. As an addition to that is if you're jumping and you're in pain.

Yeah. This

is probably not gonna get you to, like, getting pain free in my experience. Like, this is, like, to get you more robust when you're already pretty robust. Yeah. But if you're not even robust and you're like, oh, well, I'm gonna go from injured to robust doing this. In my experience, it just pisses the tenant off internally.

You can make the argument that just squatting heavy in general. It's good. Will be good for your tenant if you're if you're past a certain point in terms of tenant help.

That's true as well. So I think we we talked about, you know, these these heavy. You know, controlled lowers at 600 pounds. So let's let's take this a step further. Let's say that we're doing Isaiah, you did this with me.

The jump, you know, we do a count we do a jump into a clean pull into a hang power clean. Right? So now the bar is kind of oscillating up and down, high velocities moving a great distance. I see the where

or the squats with the fast drop. Like, where you like

Yep.

Yep. Doing those as well. Like, it's like shock loading. I kinda demonstrated this on my Instagram the other day where I did three different types on a box. Right?

And you could remove the box and even take it a step further, which is really what I was getting at. But people were like, no, you gotta do this or this. And I'm like, just remove the box. Like, it's Yeah. We're add bands.

So you could you know, if you add bands or you remove the box now, we have a different scenario. And now we're moving fast with load on our back. So one and Ben and I talked about this a little bit, but I'm not gonna go into the weeds here too much about what you'd see in ground reaction forces because you're in free fall for a brief minute when you drop fast enough with a bar on your back. Same thing you would see during like a depth or during a standing standing vertical jump. If you drop fast enough, that's why the bar will come off your back, and you'll hear the plates jiggle a little bit.

Right? You start to decrease the system. What do you call it? System mass? Is that what it's called, Ben?

Yeah. Like, it's like body weight plus bar.

Yeah. Yeah. Right. So that'll go down on the downplay. It has to.

Otherwise, the bar go down. And then the bar will hit you when you start generating, like, more force, and then you push back up. Right? So during these scenarios, let's say we have a band or we're doing that. I think a band and doing it kind of free fall, like I just said, is a little bit different.

So let's choose the free fall example. We put 300 pounds on our back, and I dropped fast. No box. Right? Don't know half squat.

Do you think that you're still gonna have that winding happen where it's this, like, kinda isometric condition most of the time? You think it's a blend of both? Like, what would you expect to happen at the muscle?

Yeah. So, like, once you hit the ground, you might have, like, a little bit of yielding. So, like, that's where you get, like, that eat like, true muscle eccentric contraction. And then act gonna,

like, actin and minds that are crawling apart from each other.

Yeah. Crawling apart. And then you and then eventually, you get to break with the weight obviously to reverse out. So like that's where you're getting the isometric muscle action, the further winding of Titan so you can get Titan adaptation from that. And the reason why I also like to use the load specifically because like I know people will be like, well, why don't you just use plios?

Like you could just do a depth jump and and the same adaptation. But we also know when you add external load to the body, almost always your rate of force development will go up in the concentric phase. And you also just have it's and because it's slightly slower, you get better sensations. And that seems to drive a lot more adaptation by doing, like, a fast drop squat to a jump or, like, a jump to a hang power clean. Like, you just sensationally, you feel more because it's slightly slower, and that seems to drive more adaptation.

So

I think too, it's the the joint angles are like, you're gonna get more stretching.

Like, the

muscle thinnest unit has to increase its length more, which is a potent stimulus. Right? Is this this stretching, whether it is rotating and twisting that titan like we saw. Like, you we see that we saw that yellow band spin around the the blue band. You know?

Or it's and if you guys are listening to this and you made it this far, definitely go watch this because it's gonna be better than just fucking listening to it. It's gonna be hard to understand. It's already hard to understand. Without pictures, it's even harder to understand. So, yeah, I think really what I'm gathering is whenever it's past the point of really what you can generate, you know, concentrically or even, like, truly eccentrically, you move to this isometric condition.

It's almost like isometric forces, the highest force generating capacity where you start to really rely on the tendon for faster movements. It's like fast isometric stuff. And so, you know, in the case of a of a banded work where now the system is not limited by like, the system weight is not limited by gravity, right, when you accelerate downward. So if the band is pulling down on you, like, let's say you're in a fifty fifty, like Ralfoy says, wanna be in a 50 Air

mass combo.

Yeah. Air mass combo. Yeah. Mnemonics aren't limited by gravity. The mass on the bar is.

So if you have, like, let's say, 150 pounds mass and a 150 pounds air, then you start lowering really fast. The air is going to continue to accelerate the bar down even though you're lowering faster than what the bar is. Right? So in that scenario, I think what happens is you get more actual elongation until you get to the bottom, and then I think you get a lot of winding as well. I don't know what that necessarily means in terms of the long term adaptation, but that's what I theorize happens.

Right? Because you still like, in the case of of a true mostly breaking, you know, like you as you call it where it's it's winding in the muscle, I think that, you're probably seeing the tendon stretch more. But the benefit of having the muscle yield is and this is my question for you, is that sarcomereogenesis that you get those two you get more sarcomeres in longitude longitude. Is that what it is?

Longitudinal hypertrophy?

Yeah. Is that is that the benefit of yielding, or do you think that it the bands do something else? Like, what are your what are your thoughts?

It's one of the benefits of yielding. As long as you're developing that past mechanical tension, technically you should be getting sarcomereogenesis. Probably over time you need a little bit like to be a little bit longer muscle lengths to get that.

And what's the benefit to sarcomereogenesis?

So you get increased so there's a couple caveats to this, but you get essentially

Too long didn't version because we're already at twenty eight minutes.

You increase your contraction velocity because sarcomereth series, they all shorten at the same speed. So if you have like oh gosh. Let me, like, really quick math. So if you have a fascicle that shortens at 20 meters per second or something and you have five soccer or four soccer marathon series, they will all shorten at, like, five meters per second, and they'll produce less force because they're shorting faster. But if you have but if it shortens at 20 meters per second and you have five of them in series, now they're shorting at four meters per second, and now they can produce more force because they're shortening a little bit slower.

It'll take a stumble of force. Or like a force velocity stumble of

blocks, essentially.

Yeah. So they they have more time to attach the crossbridge to produce force. So now that augments your power output. So that that's why you wanna increase your fast But

I like that. Simple math. 20 divided by five or 20 divided by four.

But the reason you can't stretch to increase your fastball length, because I have gotten this question, is because you also need to have a co commit an increase in or a modulation of the penation angle. So fastball so increasing your fastball length can decrease in serious compliance, so you'll be less stiff on the ground. Like, that's why, like, cheerleaders would suck at plyos because they can't they they yield too much. So to increase your fastball length for sports performance, you need a lift to do that because that's how you also just basically maintain your strength essentially is what that is to pay. Yeah.

So it's not like the strength through length thing is like, yeah, if you're stretching, that's not the way to do it. Now if I'm doing a and and what if I'm at a sub maximal load, but I'm like end range? You're just essentially still stretching. You don't have the loads necessary to see much of

the Yeah. You probably won't. You'll see it. Like, if you deep squat initially, you probably will, but but increase in fastball length happened pretty quickly. So it's usually like what usually happens with adaptation is like you'll increase fascicle length for whatever four weeks and then from that point you'll get an increase in cross sectional area.

So to increase your fascicle length further theoretically you would have to do like a super maximal eccentric maybe apply, like, something really, really intense.

Which is what we do.

Which is what you do. So yeah. So yep. Yeah.

Okay. So unless you guys are doing split squats, What what's what's the name of the guy in Canada who died from heart attacks? Paul Quinn. Unless you're doing Paul Quinn's, split squats at, 500 fucking pounds, you're not getting sargramereogenesis to happen. I'm sorry.

Yeah. You also probably tear your posterior meniscus if you try it.

That's but and your labrum

rupture the posterior horn of the meniscus without much prep.

And your labrum and your hip is gonna get absolutely shredded as

Now let's not do that, guys. Let's not do that.

Let's not shred our in our our the interior portion of our joint capsule. Let's not do that either. I'm not a I'm not a physical therapist.

I just I just know a

little bit about about anatomy. Anyways, so this is why we brought Ben in. That's because Ben knows he's he's very well read and can kind of explain some of these things that Isaiah and I would know experimentally, and we've heard over time, but he can go into the weeds, which I love. I love that. It's always interesting to me.

So, you know, big key takeaways here, because we've we've talked a lot about the why. We might might have to do a part two of this next week and, like, how to implement this into your training because this is so intense. Like, I would not recommend people go out and just load up 500 pounds on their

back and be like, I'm

gonna lower it down to the pins. Hey. Good luck, buddy. Let me know how that goes for you. You know, there's a lot of risk associated with this, and there's also neurological aspects that we didn't even discuss.

Oh, yeah. A lot more to it, guys. Lot more to it.

Long lasting effects that if you don't account for, you might really, really mess yourself up for longer than you would have otherwise expected. So, you know, those are some other considerations. I guess maybe my last question to you, Ben, would be in regards to the the bands versus the air mass or the air mass combo as opposed to just mass. Do you think that there's something physiologically, like muscle physiologically that that happens that's beneficial, or is it purely that you can just get faster? I've

I've asked Rolf basically that same question. He's like, you can just overload the eccentric with the air. So you just get a fast eccentric velocity. What I always found was interesting was you don't is like technically when you reverse out of that pneumatic device, it should be a little bit lighter at the bottom and then it'll kind of get heavier as you accelerate. But yeah.

So Rolf just says it throws you down pretty much versus just just using mass.

Yeah. And we I've tried this with my athlete, Nick. He's probably the first person I've tested using a lot of Rolf's concepts. You know, Randy and Rolf, it's not just one or the other. I don't know who to attribute what to who, and I don't it's too hard to figure out.

But to both of you, if you listen to this, which I doubt you guys do, is that they get higher eccentric TPVs. So for example,

it's

the time to peak velocity, and it's how fast are you lengthening that muscle. That's Rolf even said that on my post yesterday. And the ability to do that is limited by the acceleration due to gravity. Right? If I can only lower, let's say, Isaiah, both of you guys have OERs, how far what's the what's the distance tracked on a half squat for you guys?

Like, 40 centimeters or something or 40 inches? I don't know.

I mean, I forgot what it was on a on a squat on a clean pool. I think it's I wanna say 32 around there.

32 inches, though. Right?

Yeah.

Yeah. That's about about probably about where mine is or so.

Do you know what the squat has been?

My Well, when I did it, like, when I did a squat max on Monday, it was, like, 26.6 for, like, a benches, like, a half squat, yeah, inches.

Okay. So, yeah, so 26 inches. Let's say, like, you are dropping 26 inches in a squat half squat. Right? So that means the bar can only accelerate downwards 26 inches.

So that's about two feet. It's not even a meter. Right? We know that the acceleration due to gravity is what? 9.8 meters per second squared.

So if I'm dropping one meter, you're not at that's the acceleration due to gravity, but you didn't there's a little bit of confusing math. But the peak I think the peak velocity you can hit after falling for one meter, isn't it half that? Is that right? Is it half that? I wanna say it's half.

Sure. I don't know. I don't know. I don't if it's half.

Guys. Guys. Guys. I'm gonna ask the GPT Google because you guys Yeah. Velocity.

I just know that the bands accelerate you down, and then, like, that just has it has more breaking demands essentially. Potentially more like agonist relaxation. So like you can like relax a little bit faster, but

Hey. I was right. It's 4.43. It's half that. You guys are Nice.

So if you fall one meter, the peak velocity you can get to is 4.48. That is the fastest that you can get. Right? So the what the band lets you do is it allows you to to accelerate faster than gravity. Right?

Because it's not limit it is an an additional different type of acceleration. It's not mass based. That's the same thing with mnemonics. That's the benefit. So you can get higher, as Ben just said, eccentric TPV.

That's the beauty of it. So that's another way to do it. We're gonna get into that a different time, but it is related because Yo.

Imagine doing depth jumps with the belt squat. Oh my god. Wait. Wait. Because you say you say in the band, it made me think of it.

Like, what if you put the belt squat on, get on a box, and then just like, boom.

Or what if you, like, grab bands and hop off a box, and then you, like, let the bands go, like, before you advertise? Just like this rocket. Like, either that or you or or or you tear something

Drop off eight feet.

Be fine.

Drop off eight feet. Just drop off eight feet. You have a higher velocity if you drop off eight

feet. Right.

Off eight feet. We have so many different ideas now. We just wanna know how hard can we throw you into the ground. Like, I've seen people do it where they are on a box and someone has their hand two people on each shoulder. Yeah.

Step off the box and they just push them down into the floor. Like, that's diabolical. That when people say diabolical, that is truly diabolical. I'll give you guys one more example of this.

There's this evil device called the

k box. Now this evil device Ben, have you used the k box before?

I have not, but I know what it is. Have you used the flywheel before at all?

No. Alright. So let me tell you about this diabolical evil device. So there's these spears on it. They look like fucking blades you would have seen out of some medieval movie or video game, right, like God of War.

And you put these masks on this thing, and it spins up. Okay? So one day, my brilliant idea is to figure out how to get and it gave you metrics. It would tell you newtons. It would say eccentric, rate of force development, it'd give you eccentric force.

And I was like, why am I doing these squats and I'm not getting higher metrics on this? How do I max it out? So I have the brilliant idea to get all of the interns around, and I wanna get on this device in a half squat. And if you generate someone holds the wheel, the number one way you can get a higher force eccentrically is if you pre preload the wheel by generating isometric force, and then they let go of the wheel. So now you're able to generate more force because the initial force when they let go of the wheel is quite high because I've had five seconds to generate force and push up.

So let go of the wheel. And then my job is to, in a quarter squat, stop all the energy that I generated across a half squat in a quarter squat. So now I'm asked to, you know, yield across very small distance with a lot of generated momentum. Right? It's kinda like a depth jump.

So then I'm like, alright. Well, how do we do this even more intense? They're like, well, let's put more wheels on. And then what we'll do is we'll have someone grab your back and they're gonna pull you upwards with the wheels. So now I'm adding momentum, and I'm adding velocity.

So now they're holding on to my back. I'm doing a pretension isometric, and they're pulling me upwards. And my job is to stop all of that momentum immediately in a quarter squat. That fucks up my knee. But I'm like, let's take it a step further.

So then this is I remember this, and it was the most shocking, painful shit I've ever done. The goal was to do that, but then not only stop it, but to stand up. So as the wheel is pulling me down, I was asked to stand up and resist and then do, like, a, like, a quarter rhythm squat until it ran out of energy. The wheel ran out of energy. So we have two people on each side on my harness.

I'm in a I'm in a half squat. They're holding onto the wheel, so I'm pretensing push, push, push, push, They let go of the wheel, and two people rocket me upwards with two wheels of momentum on this. And then I have to stop it as fast and as hard as I can in a quarter squat and try to stand back up. And holy shit. It felt like my knee bone shot out of the front of my leg.

It was the most excruciatingly painful thing. But I'll tell you what, the eccentric forces on that were fucking insane. Like, it was like it was like double what we'd ever seen anyone get on the k box in eccentric forces. And, at that point, I was like, I would rather just do playos. Like, that was the moment in time where I was like, I would never use this stimulus.

I could have just dropped off an 80 inch box over what I just decided to do. But then I had an idea. I was like, how do I make it harder? And I was like, oh, I would just wait until the wheel accelerated me into a half squat instead of a quarter squat and then try to dissipate all the force. Because now I'm in a leveraged, like, in a disadvantage in that leverage position, the wheel might win.

Hopefully, it doesn't. And then try to stand back up. I didn't do that one because I thought I might die. And we have

to go out and then go on a single leg.

Yes. And then put my hands on something and assist myself up like a bar while two people accelerate me upwards. Like, hand supported, essentially.

A bad scientist.

It was it was truly terrible.

Training is just torture, man. I see I hear that, and I'm like, wow. Sounds

I love it, though.

But you could also just buy a ten eighty Quantum. Shout out Rolf, and then you can do all this yourself on that device.

How much is that? Like, $3,020,000?

Thousand? Maybe 60? Between 60 and 30? Yeah. Do you do you know, Ben, how much it is?

No. I can Google it, but

No. We should we start an affiliate thing with them.

Dude, I would yeah. Rolf, if you're listening to this, I would absolutely love to have a '10 80 Quantum, by the way.

Well, there we we'll get into that another time. Anyways, this is a good place to cut it off after that story. Thank you guys for listening. If you made it this far, you guys are real ones. You really care about improving, being a better coach, or being a better athlete.

If you guys wanna be a better athlete and you want to take this stuff seriously and you are invested in your long term athletic development, That is what we do. We don't like one and dones. Be a long term athlete and you'll see long term success. You'll see the best success. Be consistent.

Go to teachforstrength.com and sign up. We're running a Black Friday deal right now. It ends at 04:00. By the time you guys are listening to this, if you made it this far, it's already gonna

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Maybe. But congratulations for that. Anyways, we'll see you guys, tomorrow. Thank you, Ben, for for being my muse.

You're welcome.

See you, boys and girls.