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Isaiah Rivera, pro dunker, and John Evans discuss anything related to maximizing athletic performance, and in particular, jump training. Strength and conditioning, jumping technique, weight room practices, and general fitness and health tips and advice are shared on this podcast.
What is up everybody? I'm Isaiah Rivera, first person ever to test the 50 inch vertical. This is my coach, John Evans. He now has taught the current world record holder. Taught is a weird word.
Speaker 1:He's coached the current world record holder from a 49 to a 52 inch vertical.
Speaker 2:So you're be 52 and a
Speaker 1:half. Yeah.
Speaker 2:He's gonna test 52 and a
Speaker 1:Along with two other athletes to test a 50 weather flight time or an official test. And today, we're gonna be talking about something that 80% of the people that sign up for our coaching
Speaker 2:Talk about it a lot, and it's And I still get questions.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's called tendon pain. Patellar tendinopathy, the most common one. Achilles tendinopathy, the second most common one. And me and John had a long talk this morning about it.
Speaker 2:I wanna let you mostly talk because you did a lot of the a lot of studying on this, but I do wanna say that it's interesting to me that most of what he said is what I've said before, but it was like, it got through today. And I I don't know why, but it definitely feel like you
Speaker 1:Not even got through today. It's been I think I've been learning more and more about, like, more deeply about it over the last couple months. It's the last two months specifically.
Speaker 2:I am gonna put this on here.
Speaker 1:The reason the reason this has been so top of mind for me is because two months ago, is roughly around the time when I found out that I might be doing Dunkman. It's also when a lot of the events that I I was doing this summer got finalized. So I've done by the time Dunkman happens, it'll have been let's see. I just did two, then I have Dunk Camp in Turkey. So dunk man's the the fifth event that I'm doing this summer.
Speaker 1:And then I'm coming off of the last two summers, jumped insane the whole year, and then the summer events got derailed by tendon pain. So the biggest, essentially, summer of my life as a pro dunker coming up, and I didn't want that to happen again. And I wrote down the one thing to guarantee that I do well at Dunkman would be staying healthy. Yeah. So this became very top of mind, very, very top of mind.
Speaker 1:I started tracking it even more accurately than I have been in terms of tendon pain.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Let's talk about why and what you've changed.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. So the I guess the two things that like the two big concepts we talked about this morning. One, not freaking out as much about tendon pain. So I wanna talk about that, the psychological aspect of it.
Speaker 1:And I guess the what eased that was understanding the physiology. And then the second thing is actually tracking less or changing what you're tracking. And then a a sub point, a third point is being more strict with high intensity stuff when you feel pain. So high intensity meaning max effort jump sessions and then like maybe sets of one through five reps in terms of deep squatting would be Yeah. Would be the big one.
Speaker 2:So let's talk I guess my question to you would be why why is it that you don't panic as much with your pain scoring? What what changed? Why do you feel that way?
Speaker 1:What did you learn Yeah. That made you think that? So and this is not just for me. I I feel like if you've ever had tendon pain and then you've had something big that you're training for, you've probably felt some kind of anxiety around tendon pain. And typically, when I would feel anxiety around my tendon pain scores is leading up to a big event and then the morning after a sessions.
Speaker 1:But I would say the morning after a session leading up to a big event. That's probably the biggest source of anxiety. And what eased that was just understanding the physiology of what a reactive tendon means. So for the those of you that don't know, tendon goes through stages of tendinopathy. The first one being reactive, then you go into Disrepair.
Speaker 1:Disrepair, then degenerative tendinopathy. Is that is that Yeah. The only categories? I feel like
Speaker 2:there's There's reactive There's three. Disrepair, and then degeneration.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I
Speaker 2:mean, it's a sliding scale, but yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And different parts of your tendon can be going through different parts of those stages. But typically, if you've generally been asymptomatic, meaning your tendon hasn't been hurting, and then you all of a sudden feel pain the next morning after a session, you're probably in disrepair. Same thing, if you've been feeling good and then let's say you there's a jump where you feel like a sudden pain in your tendon, your tendon doesn't just magically become degenerative. Like that takes a long time to undergo that process.
Speaker 1:There's things that happen in the short term that is considered reactive. Physiologically, the the things I've been researching a lot is proteoglycans and and gags. I always remember that word, gags.
Speaker 2:Gags and proteoglycans.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Which live in the extracellular matrix between tendons, and they are responsible for the chemical bonds that stiffen the tendon, which if you watched my YouTube video, you would know that.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And they attract water. They attract they attract water. And when your when your tendon is reactive, it's essentially an alarm is going off. The you have you have nerves in your tendon.
Speaker 1:They're called the Nociceptive nerve fibers. Yeah. Nociceptive nerve fibers. And they sense load and they send a signal to the brain and your brain essentially, you perceive that as as pain. But pain doesn't mean your tendon is messed up.
Speaker 1:You also might have the horrible looking tendon
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And not feel pain. There was
Speaker 2:this interesting study that, I don't know if it's published yet, but I've talked about it before. They essentially did a ton of scans on NBA players in the G League. And what they found is like, I think it was some insane amount. Basically, every single person under a scan has tendons in disrepair that or some segments that have disrepair or degeneration. And there's a lot of them that don't have any symptoms at all.
Speaker 2:There's some of them that do.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So basically, when you feel pain in the short term, I I described it to John. It's like a smoke detector. It's like your brain is sending a signal so that you don't keep going and rupture a tendon. That's essentially essentially what's happening.
Speaker 1:And understanding this, that it's just an alarm basically or a smoke detector. And then trying to zoom out and being like, okay, it's okay if I feel some pain and then I cut it, if you're feeling it in the session. And then if you're feeling it the next morning, that's your your tendon trying to protect itself. The way I saw it described was like, you basically have stress on the tendon and stress is load over area. And your tendon releasing all those proteoglycans and gags and attracting water is it's trying to increase the volume of the tendon so that the load is dispersed over a bigger area, so there's less stress on the tendon.
Speaker 1:And then when you go do isometrics or when you go do heavy slow resistance training, you're trying to make the the brain realize, oh, there is no damage. We're we're okay. He just did some loading on the tendon and the tendon didn't snap in half. We're good. And that's why the the the tendon calms down.
Speaker 1:The problem is if you feel, let's say, you're at a one out of 10 and then the next morning you're at a four or five out of 10, and then that's just sustained for a few days. Yeah. That's when you're you've probably ran into some issues. For me specifically though, now looking at the data, there's always some pain the next morning. And this is like, I've told
Speaker 2:him I've said this a lot of times to you. Maybe I haven't, but I'm pretty sure I have. I've definitely said it to him, which is it doesn't matter necessarily what you're at the next day. It it does, but what matters more is, are you back to baseline by the time you do your next jump session? Right?
Speaker 2:So if if a guy pulls up from a session and he's a seven, he's probably not gonna be ready in a week. Like there is is that's not gonna happen. That's a problem. And that's why we I take the scores in and I pay attention to them. But if it's Isaiah or Dom or even Josh and they pull up and they're a three, well, we're good.
Speaker 2:I have already set in place safety measures different workouts to get the tendon to be desensitized and prepped for the following week. That's why we do a feel good lift. That is the entire purpose of it. And I know, you know, some of the training we've we've been putting out, Ben, has adapted a little bit. And one of the big, you know, kind of problems that I've mentioned to you is that you've to be careful with not having a feel good lift in there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you have two high intensity lifts in a jump session, but by spreading it out, you're now missing a day where you potentially could be desensitizing the tendon. So I think that lift in and of itself is, it's an assessment period to see, hey, how are you feeling after your session? You know, like some of the most important data I get from athletes is how do you feel during your slow squats? What weight did you do? What tempo did you do?
Speaker 2:How how deep did you squat? Where did you feel it? And how bad did you feel it? So for example, if Isaiah's on the belt squat and he's doing half squats and it's a three and we're at one thirty five, that's a problem. Right?
Speaker 2:Like I'm gonna need to, I always tell guys like, hey, go to your go to your session, to your event. When you come back, we'll we'll put you back together. Right? And that that would be like a scenario where that happens. Best case, it doesn't.
Speaker 2:But if it does, then that's the purpose of that. And kind of what Isaiah was saying is like, it doesn't mean that you're gonna tear your tendon necessarily. It doesn't mean that you're you're screwed or that you're you're going the other direction. It's just jumping is the most intense thing you can do. I used to tell people this in the lecture I gave on tendons.
Speaker 2:I'm like, there's nothing more intense than jumping. You see 16 times body weight on a single leg jump go through your your your body And at the tendon, it's far more because of leverages. And you're at a mechanical disadvantage to some extent and it's a it's a lever. So there's gonna be a huge amount of force going through the tendon and that's just, that's a byproduct of it. You know, another thing we talked about is like these events that guys do where they're dunking, you know, in the morning and then in the evening and then they've they've gotta come back the next day and do it again and again.
Speaker 2:And I'm like, Isaiah said to me, he's like, well, I just don't know how you prepare a guy for that. And I'm like, you don't. Like, the it was the problem is not the athlete. The problem is the system. You know, that's a systemic it's a it's a systemic issue with the format of it and not the athlete.
Speaker 2:Because to test or jump at 50 plus inches over the age of maybe 22 or 23 multiple times, guys are gonna feel it. It's gonna happen. Because to get to that level, you probably develop some degenerative tendinopathy, you probably develop some disrepair, you've probably got reactive tendons. And even if you don't, that increase in load is so sharp that you wouldn't necessarily ever do that in training. You shouldn't because you will have a flare up.
Speaker 2:And by forcing yourself to go back into those contests at that frequency, the load is just too high. It was never intended for athletes to bounce back from. It's why in the NBA, LeBron is not dunking every single play. I remember after the the Cavs, I think it was in like '20 I think it's the year that they came back and beat the Warriors.
Speaker 1:2016?
Speaker 2:2016. And he was talking to reporters and he's like, you guys think I can just go down and dunk the ball every single play. That I can just, you know, just assert, you know, my my will against these people. And that's just, that's not reality. You can't, you, there are limits to tissue capacity.
Speaker 2:And at the highest level, in basketball or baseball, they've tried to see what is the most we can push these athletes to do to make as much money as possible without necessarily taking into account how it affects their body. It's why Kawhi doesn't play in, you know, certain games or why De'Aaron Fox is on the bench or why Wendy has limited minutes. Because the format has required them to play at such a high level, at such an intense level that they can't they cannot get away with doing a 100% effort the entire game. And it's an old school mentality that I think has probably ended a lot of careers. I think in in you look at some of the older dunkers and stuff like that, it's it's probably what why they stopped dunking.
Speaker 1:And we and not just ended careers, there's probably so many people we have never seen that would have been elite Yeah. In any in any sport, like
Speaker 2:Yeah. Absolutely. Because of that mentality. Like, you know, if you look at even Christian McCaffrey right now, you know, he's got chronic tendinopathy and it it is it's pretty bad. He's Is a NFL running back for the niners.
Speaker 2:And he's probably one of the greatest running backs of, no, maybe not greatest, but he's really damn good and he's one of the top backs in the league and he has limited minutes. He can't play at a 100% the entire time and it is because probably, I would assume, that his training schedule and his play schedule is just too intense. So then he comes to the season, he pisses it off during training camp and then the rest of the year you've you've got to manage that. And it's not necessarily like he's not doing the right things, it's that to play at a high level, there are expectations placed on you that are going to load the tenant to that degree and it's it's tough. Volleyball's another one.
Speaker 2:Volleyball, the only reason that I think people can make it through volleyball is because they, well first off, probably all do have pain. That's the first. The second is because the matches are forty five or whatever minutes and the coaches that manage load in practice better are gonna be the ones who don't have their athletes as banged up. And it's it's even more so, like it's not even just 10, you know, it's it's everything. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And if you have a max effort jump session, you're gonna feel pain and you're expected to go practice the next day. What do you what's gonna happen in that case? Well, your smoke alarm's going off and you're gonna go back into practice and jump again, then you're risking, you know, taking massive steps backwards. So I think when in the context of what we do and for you the day after a jump session or Dom, I'm okay if there's a two or a three in a in a squat or something at one eighty five. But I wanna know forty eight hours from now where you at.
Speaker 2:And best case scenario, there's not a huge spike. Like Dom dunked yesterday for fifteen minutes at, in a 100 degree weather, basically had like heat exhaustion. And he woke up today and he was at a he's at a two. Like, that's great progress. Guess what he did?
Speaker 2:I told him, don't go don't jump to the point of pain, which is to Which to your next point.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Which is the next thing I wanna talk about, which is just pain scoring as a whole. So the first thing is the morning pain test. One thing, and this has helped with the anxiety around tendon pain, is one, not putting as much credence on specific tests. So your tendons, which is something I've known this, but it's like I relearned it yesterday.
Speaker 1:There's different capacities. There's like tensile load. There's compressive load. There's energy storage, there's a a stretch shortening cycle capacity. I made one up, but it was like
Speaker 2:It's like volume.
Speaker 1:It's like Oh, yeah. Actually, yeah. Repetitive load is one. Repetitive. The one I made up was like, your
Speaker 2:Cold tendon capacity.
Speaker 1:Cold tendon capacity. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I was like, that's not a thing, brother. Yeah. That that is
Speaker 1:just I a think it is a
Speaker 2:thing. Underprepared tendon.
Speaker 1:No. I think the the reason I I
Speaker 2:That's think a that's a yeah. The tendon is just it's high risk.
Speaker 1:Yeah. The thing the reason I think it is a thing is, like, everybody does have a different cold tendon capacity.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And, like, nobody can go a 100% completely cold unless your outputs are really low without tearing it. But some people Could get closer. Go could go maybe 50% right now and, like Yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean, there's definitely like a level of of health to that.
Speaker 1:Then I don't know if you can improve it.
Speaker 2:I think it's probably something that's a lot like built up over years. You know, where, you know, like someone like you is gonna have a really hard time with that because you've got years and years of dunking and chronic tendinopathy where your tendon is going to respond negatively when you
Speaker 1:And if it's brittle, it's not gonna It's not gonna
Speaker 2:be good. But someone like, you know, Dylan McCarthy
Speaker 1:You're tearing my the TFL, the IT band, that is a perfect example of that. Yep. Too brittle. It is. It's too soon.
Speaker 2:It's like silly putty. Yeah. You know, it's like there's no the fluid in there and and it's a the extracellular matrix is a jelly, essentially. Right? So if that if the collagen is not used to being unkinked or you know the fluids in there and the proteoglycans and the gags and the proteins in there, maybe they're not used to having those bonds or being ready to store and release that much energy, you're gonna cause damage.
Speaker 2:You know what I mean? Like it's gonna be problematic. And if you have a really, really healthy tendon or at least a really asymptomatic one, that doesn't mean that it's not stressful on the tissue. You know Like, what I there's gonna be a cost if you do that. Just you
Speaker 1:get younger, I like I I looked into it, and you do have more blood flow in your tendon when you're younger. And after a certain But yeah. After a certain age, like, there there's it probably is warmer. Like
Speaker 2:Well, the other thing too is I was looking at when I was studying research on this too. The core of the tendon is like, it's pretty non modifiable. You know? Like, you Yeah. It's it's very limited in what you can do there.
Speaker 2:It's probably something where, longitudinally, when we look at athletes with thicker tendons, you know, like, that's one of the slowest things to adapt. And it's probably because the remodeling takes so long and it's so slow, and there's not a study that's going to run long enough to be able to assess those differences. Yeah. So you might see stiffness change by 5% or something like that in a twelve week study, but it might take a hundred and twenty five weeks, you know, or a hundred and twelve weeks before you'd see a significant amount of hypertrophy or change in the cross sectional area Yeah. For all of those, the collagen and proteoglycans to actually lead to that.
Speaker 1:A lot of the studies that were like seeing differences in cross sectional area were like a year.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Like Yep.
Speaker 1:Earlier than that, like, it wouldn't
Speaker 2:really It's like you're not gonna see a change. Yeah. And I think it's it's why we've come to the conclusion that that resistance training is so effective, and this is maybe something else that you talked about, is and you said this, tendons don't care about direction. They don't care about the type of loading. All they know is tension and time.
Speaker 2:That's it. It's it's tension and time. So if you know, whether it's an eccentric or it's a concentric or it's an isometric, it's how long did you do it and how much force was going through the tendon. That's what tells the the mechanotransducers in the tendon.
Speaker 1:When I looked at it, it was stretch. Yeah. Essentially tension is what stretches. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Stress and stretch.
Speaker 1:The the tennis height.
Speaker 2:So it's it's like tennis
Speaker 1:height. Woah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Like, if you do a static and people are like, oh, just static stretch. That's not what stretches a it can a little bit, but it's like, imagine you had a steel bar and you, you know, it was attached to some hydraulic press that pulled it apart. Like, stretching is like applying not a lot of force. Right?
Speaker 2:That's the muscle elongating and the tendon maybe is, it's viscoelastic, there's not a lot of force. So maybe there's a little bit of deformation, but it's not a lot. If you want a tendon to deform a lot, you pull on it. You create a shitload of stress that causes strain. And that strain that's is the deformation, that's what will Yeah.
Speaker 2:Induce adaptation.
Speaker 1:And I I forgot. On the capacity point, so the test you pick is important because you might be picking a test that isn't gonna tell you much about your preparedness for your sport. So my test has traditionally been a deep body weight squat. And what I was noticing is there were days where my tendon some of the most pain free sessions I had, my deep squat test was like a three, like the morning of. It was it was right before my show in Montana.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. And then I went and dunked, and it like one of my best jump days with with no pain. It's almost like
Speaker 2:you need to trust that you've done everything right by going through the training
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And knowing you're pain free in the training. So
Speaker 1:yeah. So that so that that's that's what my next point was gonna be is moving away from either when I'm in an event, I'm not gonna do my morning pain test because it's only gonna Cause cause anxiety. Yeah. Essentially. And it's not gonna change the plan.
Speaker 1:No. Nothing's gonna change. If I'm at an event, right, and I have to let's say I'm I'm in the I'm in the contest, the finals for five hundred thousand dollars, what is me doing a body weight squat? How how is what's gonna change if I'm at a one or if I'm at a four? Nothing.
Speaker 1:I'm still gonna go out.
Speaker 2:Yeah. You've done everything. Like, haze in the barn. It's like when guys come the week before a big, you know, contest and like, oh, what do I do to prep? I'm like, buddy, it's too
Speaker 1:late. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Like, the same thing's true with the pain. It's like, you're at a four, you're at a four. It's we've done as much prep to make that not happen. But if it happens, it's like, the plan isn't gonna change. Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know what I mean?
Speaker 1:And a and a lot of the pain you feel with the different capacities, whether it's stretch running cycle or compression is neural. And I've seen this now with the last two feel good lifts I did. Some of the best my deep body weight squat is is the day after I do the on the toes deep barbell back squat.
Speaker 2:Oh, really?
Speaker 1:Because I'm doing the position.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah.
Speaker 1:So I think my my brain just like, oh, this is like, he's okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah. You He's alive. You're, like, desensitizing it.
Speaker 1:I'm just desensitizing it and, specific range of motion.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It doesn't necessarily mean
Speaker 1:Nothing happened in the structure.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Like There's probably, like, very minimal changes if anything. I mean, you might have some fluid moving in and out, you know, but tenants remodel really, really soon.
Speaker 1:And this brings me, I guess, to, like, the rules I've created for myself with testing is treat the warm up for whatever you're doing as the test. Yeah. So every day instead of I do track my morning pain score. I'm just not attaching myself to the score.
Speaker 2:And we used to do this. We used to I used to say, base it off how you feel during your ISOs. That's what I want to be the test.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. So now I do my straight leg kettlebell ISO hold, which I mean, one's basically pain free now every day. It's not really giving me it's noise now at this point. Now
Speaker 2:it's like now it's like, what's your deep Yeah. Toe ball back squat or what's it jumping?
Speaker 1:And yeah. So now when I do my warm ups, I'm paying attention to is it warming up. If it's warming up, keep going. If it's not warming up and by warming up, am I feeling what what I mean is am I feeling less pain set to set. If it's not warming up, okay, modify the lift Yeah.
Speaker 1:To something that feels okay. And then my rules for once you're fully warmed up you're doing something high intensity is don't feel pain. Yeah. There is too much subjectivity, especially as a coach. I think if if you know your body extremely well, this could be a little different.
Speaker 1:But especially as a coach, it's just like, alright. Cut it as soon as you feel pain or, like, don't feel pain. Like, I don't I don't trust what people's Scores. Scores are, bro. Mason I was talking to Mason, at dunk man, and he was like, my knee's at a six out of 10.
Speaker 1:And he's over here, like, when he went windmill honey dip, like drop step East Bay. Told him before? And I'm like, yeah. And I'm like, that is not a six out of like, you might be feeling something in there, but like You wouldn't be yeah. You wouldn't be jumping.
Speaker 1:Like, you'd have so much hesitation if you're actually at a six out of 10.
Speaker 2:Yeah. He also has like I don't think he has tenonopathy too. His is like Yeah. EFP, which, yeah, I mean, that's a different conversation.
Speaker 1:That could be a six, actually.
Speaker 2:That could be a six and you could do it. Yeah. But Yeah.
Speaker 1:But yeah. It's just too much subjectivity. I see it a lot with, like, Lewis and Dom. Yeah. Where I'm like, Dom will say there's a bubble, and then, like, Lewis will say he's got like a four, but then he, like is it too much subjectivity?
Speaker 1:So I'm just like If you feel like to pain free. You're good to go.
Speaker 2:So they're it let's just dichotomize this. Let's make it black and white here. Yeah. And is it painful or is it not? Because if it's if it's you don't feel pain
Speaker 1:And is it warming up?
Speaker 2:Yeah. And is it warming up?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. And then, what was the last thing I was gonna say?
Speaker 2:I don't know. I forgot what the last
Speaker 1:thing was.
Speaker 2:I was thinking about proteoglycans when you were talking. Really? Yeah.
Speaker 1:It is this is proteoglycans are just I was just like circling through your mind.
Speaker 2:Gags proteoglycans.
Speaker 1:Oh, proteoglycans. Gag on that water proteoglycans.
Speaker 2:Just fascicles in the tendon just sliding. You know, it's stretching.
Speaker 1:The the visual I have is is proteoglycans is the toothbrush and a gag near the bristles on the toothbrush. Really?
Speaker 2:Yeah. That's a good one.
Speaker 1:They're they're they're literally like all over the pretty place.
Speaker 2:There's chemical bonds. Yeah. And we need those chemical bonds
Speaker 1:To attract to be to attract water. That's why your tendon thickens. What was the last thing I was gonna say, bro? I don't remember. I don't remember.
Speaker 2:It's okay. This is a great podcast. Yeah. This is a good one.
Speaker 1:If you have tendon pain and you wanna get rid of the tendon remember, eighty percent of our athletes come in with tendon pain. Go to thpstrength.com, sign up for the six free months of coaching when you get the year plan. Skip the diagnosis call. They're just gonna tell you, hey, you have knee pain. Don't do the challenge.
Speaker 1:Sign up for our program. Yeah. So go sign up, guys. We are I consider ourselves the best in the biz when it comes to tendon pain.
Speaker 2:I think we're the best
Speaker 1:in this any pain vertical jump. We have this process dialed in. Patellar tendon pain, like, that is our that's our jam right there.
Speaker 2:That's our
Speaker 1:that's our I bread and remember what I was gonna say.
Speaker 2:Close this out with this last
Speaker 1:Morning pain test is good when you are very sensitive. When you're like when you first get reactive and like your tendon's elevated for a few days. I'm talking like you're in five to nine out of 10 pain gonna track because it fluctuates so much day to day, and it'll give you information on if you're moving the right direction. But when you're in that spot of, like, you can lift, you can jump, some stuff is painful, that's when the morning pain test becomes noise to quote our AI overlords. Yeah.
Speaker 2:The AI overlord, not signal. Yeah. Well, thank you guys for watching. Go to tsbstrength.com. It's the best in the world.
Speaker 2:I stand on business.