I’m pleased to welcome Henry Abbott, the author of a new book called Ballistic: The New Science of Injury Free Athletic Performance!

What an interesting conversation we had, and we went on a wide ranging journey through several topics of interest in modern big time sports. Henry has a longtime sports background–he is an award-winning journalist who led ESPN’s 60 person NBA digital and print team. So he is a longtime NBA guy behind the scenes, and in this episode, he tells us what it’s like out there, touching on concerns like this crazy long 82 game season where we expect these powerful, explosive athletes to perform night after night—this kind of turns the sport into a severe long endurance grind where you can pretty much predict the athletes are going to get injured. So Henry went on a three year long quest to determine what cutting edge scientific advancements we have to measure and program athletes to train properly to prevent injury.

The title Ballistic is interesting because he focuses on the importance of ballistic high impact training, which we typically shy away from, thinking that it’s too traumatizing. I really appreciated this because you’ve probably heard me on the show talk often about my nagging minor injuries that are always a battle and a challenge as I strive to compete in masters track and field. So you’re going to get some good tidbits and also learn what the top of the line athletes are doing—he references his connection to this training facility in Santa Barbara, California called P3, it’s operated by an old triathlon friend of mine named Dr. Marcus Elliott, and he is doing some really interesting data collection and analysis.

You will learn why Henry says that almost everyone has some sort of hip dysfunction, whether it’s hip flexor weakness or a lack of mobility, and ways that you can progress to become more functional, especially in the three most important joints that control impact forces—the ankle, knee, and the hip. Enjoy this fun and wide ranging talk with Henry Abbott, and I highly recommend you read his book Ballistic, the New Science of Injury, Free Athletic Performance, which reveals a surprising takeaway: The explosive moves and ground impacts we often avoid in everyday workouts might provide the secret to an injury-free athletic life.

TIMESTAMPS:

The three most important joints that control impact forces are the ankle, knee and the hip. So how do we best take care of them? [03:01]

The popularity of Track and Field is still struggling in comparison to other major sports. [05:00]

What is it like to cover the NBA? What about the players being prone to injury? [08:09]

Eighty-two games are too much for the players. Humans can’t do more than five max effort workouts every two weeks before their performance declines and injuries skyrocket. [10:43]

Are the players, trainers and coaches doing their best to prevent injuries?  What is P3 in Santa Barbara? [12:12]

In the book, Ballistic, Henry explains about the force at the moment of landing. [16:42]

One of the most dangerous foot positions that a player can encounter is a toes-down landing. [20:11]

We want the lower body to be loose, mobile, and flexible but we also want some areas stiff.  How does it all come together? [25:01]

Injuries occur when you come back down to earth, not by jumping up. It’s the impact of landing. [28:17]

You need to learn how to jump properly to prevent injury. [31:55]

The WHO says immobility is the fourth leading cause of a global death. [35:23]

Every athlete needs help with their hips. [36:17]

Henry talks about dirty money and sports. There can be an adverse influence on sports. [43:09]

What really makes a champion athlete is the work ethic, resilience, family-oriented, well-blanced lifestyle. [51:18]

Is there any financial incentive in modern day NBA players to continue since they get so money? [56:31]

Henry’s book Ballistic talks about caring for your body…paying attention to it to prevent injuries, but also use your body to have fun. [58:48]

LINKS:

• Brad Kearns.com
• BradNutrition.com
• B.rad Whey Protein Superfuel- The BEST Protein on The Planet!
• Brad’s Shopping Page
• BornToWalkBook.com
• B.rad Podcast – All Episodes
• Peluva Five-Toe Minimalist Shoes
• Ballistic: The New Science of Injury-Free Athletic Performance
• Usain Bolt explosiveness
• Movement Vault
• HenryAbbott.com

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TRANSCRIPT:

Brad (00:00:00):
Welcome to the B.rad podcast, where we explore ways to pursue peak performance with passion throughout life without taking ourselves too seriously. I’m Brad Kearns, New York Times bestselling author, former number three world ranked professional triathlete and Guinness World Record Masters athlete. I connect with experts in diet, fitness, and personal growth, and deliver short breather shows where you get simple actionable tips to improve your life right away. Let’s explore beyond the hype hacks, shortcuts, and science talk to laugh, have fun and appreciate the journey. It’s time to B.rad.

Henry (00:00:38):
The WHO says immobility is the fourth leading cause of global death. And so, and it contributes to so many cancers, you know, heart disease, mental health problems, all things you wouldn’t even think, right? And sleep problems, right? So, just being still is,

Brad (00:00:57):
I’m pleased to welcome Henry Abbott, the author of a new book called Ballistic: The New Science of Injury-Free Athletic Performance. What an interesting conversation we had, and we went on a wide ranging journey through several topics of interest in modern big time sports. Henry has a long time sports background. He’s an award-winning journalist who led ESPN 60-person NBA digital and print team. So he is a long time NBA guy behind the scenes. He’s gonna tell us what it’s like out there, and especially concerns like this crazy long 82 game season where we expect these powerful, explosive athletes to perform night after night. And it kind of turns the sport into a severe long endurance grind where you can pretty much predict the athletes are gonna get injured. So, Henry went on a three year quest to determine what cutting edge scientific advancements we have to measure and program athletes to train properly to prevent injury.

Brad (00:02:00):
And the title Ballistic, is interesting because he focuses on the importance of ballistic high impact training, which we typically, uh, shy away from thinking that it’s too traumatizing. So things like trics and carefully controlled, protocols where you put your, uh, tendons and connective tissue under load, thereby strengthening them to become more resilient. So, I really appreciated this ’cause you’ve probably heard me on the show talk often about my nagging minor injuries that are always a battle and a challenge as I strive to compete in Masters track and field. So you’re gonna get some good tidbits and also learn what the top-of -the -line athletes are doing. Uh, he references his connection to this training facility in Santa Barbara, California called P 3. And it’s operated by an old triathlon friend of mine named Dr. Marcus Elliott. And he is doing some really interesting data collection and analysis.

Brad (00:03:01):
You know, you get the stick figure on the computer and see how the athlete moves. They have force plate testing and all these fun things where they can predict and database the tendencies that athletes have that might get them injured and worn out over the long term, and thereby develop assessments and training protocols to help them get better. Now, that’s great if you’re going for the NBA draft or the NFL combine but we get a lot of good takeaways for the average fitness enthusiasts where you can do simple things like pull up some YouTube videos and learn a little bit more about how top athletes perform and how they move through space, and do some personal assessments right there in your home and realize that as Henry says, almost everyone has some sort of hip dysfunction, whether it’s hip flexor weakness or lack of mobility, and ways that you can progress to become more functional, especially in the three most important joints that control impact forces.

Brad (00:03:58):
And that would be the ankle, knee, and the hip. So, fun stuff, wide ranging talk with Henry Abbott. Highly recommended book Ballistic: The New Science of Injury-Free Athletic Performance. Here we go with Henry.

Brad (00:04:13):
Henry Abbott. We’re super warmed up already. I brought you on here because you have an amazing book that’s just launching called Ballistic, the New Science of Injury-Free Athletic Performance. But I am really interested to learn about your background and your long career in the world of sports, and we’re gonna get to a variety of topics, especially the cutting edge athletic training and mobility rehabilitation, injury prevention kind of things that you’ve been working on. So, welcome and thanks for joining us.

Henry (00:04:45):
I just know this is gonna be fun. I can already tell maybe from the guy behind you, uh, jumping over the high bar

Brad (00:04:51):
Feels like Yep. He saw my high jumper logo people, and then we started talking track and field, and we got, we got deep into it before I hit record. I’m like, let’s hit record, man. Let’s do this. Yeah.

Henry (00:04:58):
Couple of track nerds. Let’s go. <laugh>. Yeah,

Brad (00:05:00):
Man. Yeah. And I, I think he had some good ideas about, you know, increasing the popularity of track and field and running, which is still kind of, uh, struggling in comparison to the major sports. So what is your assessment of the, the state of that, that that scene?

Henry (00:05:20):
Well, everything that succeeds in media, as far as I can tell, is about like, human and struggle, right? And so we really have that, right? You do triathlons, right? So you know that, that there’s a moment late in the game where you’re like, oh, now I’m doing a gut check. Like, let’s see if I can do this. Like, that is resonant to a single mom who’s wondering if she can keep down two jobs while taking care of the kids. And like, these are these human relatable moments, and they’re mostly missed by the broadcast because the broadcast just shows the lead pack the whole time or, or nothing at all, which is another option for triathlons, right? But I think you wanna see these gritty come from behind, like there sometimes the guy in eighth decides just to go for it, right? And, and it works out, and that’s gonna be off camera. So I think little monitors on everybody, course profiles and drones, and we can get a sense of like, well, this guy’s in fifth, but you know, his heart rate’s still low. Maybe he’s saving something, and then we can focus more on this kind of cat and mouse that happens in the best, in the best performances.

Brad (00:06:14):
Yeah, Good point. I, I think when we see these formal broadcasts, like NBC sports is the one that covers track and field. And as a deep enthusiast, I know a lot of background about the athletes, and for some reason the commentators aren’t sharing those, those human elements. I think they do a better job in other sports. But, you know, I’d like to know that this athlete moved from her Caribbean base to Florida to train with a new coach this year, and they’re emphasizing more time in the weight room or whatever. Mm-hmm. I think people would really care about that, even if they’re not deep track and field enthusiasts. I watch my wife watching the programming and what she’s interested in as a non track fan and deep deeply getting reeled in more and more every time we go and attend to meet or watch. And it’s that background stuff that everyone responds to.

Henry (00:07:00):
Oh, totally. Yeah. And they know it. I mean, these are accessible athletes. I’ve been covering the NBA most of my life, and like, we just don’t always get to know that stuff. But in, in track and field, they do, you know that Kara Goucher knows all this stuff, right? He, he tips her hand a little bit. I’m like, oh, let us hear something. I see. You know, I’ll tell you about, I, I got my kids outta bed during the Olympics. A while ago, Molly Huddle crossed, she, she had one lap to go in, I wanna say the 1500, and was in sixth place. And she’d been training her whole life for this moment in six place is not what she wanted. Right? And I, what impressed me so much, these are, this gives me goosebumps. My literally my hair is saying, um, she just super calm.

Henry (00:07:37):
She did not scowl. She just was like, I gotta get up there. And she just DDD and she got, she ended up on the, on the podium. She got third. And I just, I wanted them to see that, like, mostly, mostly when we see like great athletic performance, it’s, it’s some sort of Hail Mary, some sort of half court shot, something that seems kind of more exciting. This was more just like quiet determination. And I wanted ’em to see that that’s like a really awesome part of this sport. And you don’t get to, it’s not, it’s usually off camera, you know what I mean? It’s like, right. Yeah, yeah. When that happens. Yeah.

Brad (00:08:09):
So you do have that deep history with the NBA. What is it like to, to cover that sport and also watch the tremendous growth in popularity in recent years?

Henry (00:08:20):
Well, it can make your shoulder tired. I literally spent a lot of time like holding a microphone. Like, that’s still like, like, I’m not even kidding. It’s literally like talking to some very tall person. Yeah, no, it’s a very free moving sport, and I feel like it’s kind of overtly just kind of astounding, right? If you get to sit close to the action, any kid, anybody knows, it’s exciting, right? Everybody knows if you give a kid like a garbage can and a ball, like they already know what’s supposed to happen, right? There’s something kind of human about this sport. Just you put the, put the ball in the can, right? That’s what we do. And so, yeah, I think they’re brilliant. I think they are. I think right now these are the best players in the history of the world. I think it’s, you know, we’re really spoiled with this.

Henry (00:09:01):
I have my quibbles about how the sport’s administered. And you know, there’s a lot of, honestly, before I wrote this book, I was doing this whole dirty money in sports project. Hmm. That’s an unpleasant topic, Brad, lemme tell you. But, um, but yeah, I do think that, you know, the, the biggest issue in the sport right now is injuries. Mm. My friend Tom Habestroh shared a little social media post a couple weeks ago that at that time, 50% of the NBA stars were out injured, 50%. And it’s been, you know, it’s been bad my whole career, but getting worse because the sport’s so much more intense now. The athleticism is off the charts. Hmm. The game has played at a faster speed, jumping higher, cutting harder, and the bodies just can’t take the 82 game season anymore. So we’re seeing, you know, like I think, you know, there’s a lot of controversy around Kawhi Leonard who sometimes is the best player in the history of the league, and most of the time is not playing right? Like, this is the modern player, right. Is they just can’t cope with it. Which was part of the reason I wanted to look into this whole injury thing, because it’s underpinning, you know, the NBA’s future growth is. Can they, can they solve it?

Brad (00:10:08):
Well, I think the first place to look is the 82 game season, which is a ridiculous grind.

Henry (00:10:14):
Thank you.

Brad (00:10:14):
When we’re talking about, you know, it’s an, it’s a sport of athleticism, power and explosiveness, but it turns into be this grueling endurance slog because they have to play so frequently in travel so much. And it doesn’t, it’s just a, it’s just a bad match. But I guess that’s where you, you have to have that many games to bring in that type of revenue. The players don’t mind getting paid a lot of money. But I think that’s a place to focus if we could shorten the season and make it more quality or something.

Henry (00:10:43):
Yeah. There’s, this top doctor from the Mayo Clinic, he’s a brilliant guy. He was saying that, you know, humans can’t, like, you can do five max effort workouts every two weeks beyond that, you performance declines and injury rates skyrocket. Right? And so the NBA, every single player, every single two weeks plays more than that. And it’s, I think it’s an entertainment industry choice. So my friend Kevin Arvi, there’s a, somewhere online you can find this brilliant talk he gave at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics conference about how like Game of Thrones, I think in its final season, maybe had like a seven episode season, six episodes. The NBA’s got a TV season that’s 1,230 episodes. Mm-hmm. And it’s, they have this kind of low quality volume play, and as an entertainment product, it’s about the same as a Seinfeld rerun.

Henry (00:11:36):
And so they pump out this kind of crappy product, and they just have, need a ton of them because they don’t get to charge very much for it. Like what the NFL does is more like Game of Thrones. We’re like, we just have a precious few and we’re gonna charge you a fortune forum and we’re gonna make everybody stay home and watch. And if you can get a ticket, you’re gonna go ’cause it’s must see. Right. And the NBA just doesn’t have that approach, but I think it might take some courage, but I think that’s the future is. That’s the best use of LeBron’s crazy unique body. Right? It’s like he, you wanna see him jump as high as he can, run as fast as he can. Instead, we just see him play four nights outta five, and he’s, it’s, he’s smart not to run fast and jump high in that setting.

Brad (00:12:12):
Well, I mean, it’s hard to discern too. They still look like they’re amazing athletes playing hard at any regular season game. But you can tell there’s a, there’s a level up in the playoffs where you see the defense coming on a lot stronger and their full capabilities. I mean, they seem like the athletes are trained better these days. What do you think about behind the scenes? Are the athletes doing the best they can to take care of themselves through this grind and, and the coaches and the trainers?

Henry (00:12:43):
So, it’s a great question. No. In a word, I don’t think they’re doing the best they can. The yes, it’s better for sure. It’s better. I mean, they used, when I started covering the league, people smoked, you know, people would go out and party and play hungover and like, no, that doesn’t happen anymore. Right. They’re just, the game is too intense. You can’t be smoking <laugh>. You know, like that’s a, that’s a big step. Yeah. But, you know, so I spent a lot of time for this book at this place called P 3 in Santa Barbara, where oh, more than 70% of the NBA has been assessed by them. The, you know, current rostered players. And their position is basically that NBA players don’t train hard at all because they can’t. Right. Like, when you do a really hard workout, you want three days before you compete again.

Henry (00:13:26):
And in season they never get that. Right. So they go there and they’ll, they’ll spend, you know, 5, 6, 7 weeks of the off season. Right now, there’s a whole bunch of players there preparing for the NBA draft. They’ll be there for 5, 6, 7 weeks and they’ll get their numbers. I can explain more what their numbers are, but their movement quality numbers, their injury risk numbers will be down, their movement, quality numbers will be up. Right. And they’ll look really good, and then they just won’t have the opportunity. They’ll go off to the season and they’ll come back next off season and their numbers will be bad. Right. Because they just haven’t had a chance to do the maintenance work they need to do to keep their hips and feet and lower leg muscles and backs and everything. Tip top.

Brad (00:14:06):
Yeah. Yeah. That’s Marcus Elliot’s facility in Santa Barbara. And these are pretty common popping up around catering to professional athletes where it’s like a training center. Maybe you can describe more what they do there, what’s so special about P 3 and, and the other places like it.

Henry (00:14:23):
Yeah. So, this guy Marcus Elliott, he tore his ACL on his 17th birthday in football practice. And then he got depressed and he would retreat it to his bedroom and his girlfriend left him for the guy who took his place on the football team. And he was, you know, it wasn’t a great year. He resolved to give up his future playing football and instead figure out the human body so that other people wouldn’t have to go through what he went through. But what do you study when you wanna prevent sports injuries? Right? He, it’s not clear, he studied biochemistry undergrad, then he went to Harvard Medical School and was like delivering babies and dealing with infectious diseases and all this stuff. He came up with a protocol that attracted the interest of the New England Patriots to identify who is at risk for hamstring injuries.

Henry (00:15:05):
Based on all kinds of inputs, time of year, what position you play, how fast you run your running form as analyzed on video, et cetera. And, that seemed like pretty promising. There was some signal there in the noise that you could go and give a targeted training to this wide receiver or this cornerback, so they would not have the hamstring injury they were at risk for. Then he worked for the Seattle Mariners, then he started P3. Eventually they kept trying, they had like brain scanning devices. They had all kinds of different tech to try to see like what was upstream from a catastrophic injury to try to mimic how we treat heart disease. Right. We used to just think heart attacks were acts of God, then we learned that your arterial blood flow slows down mm-hmm. For a decade. Right. And you can treat the heart attack before you have it, which is like the most successful medical intervention in human history.

Brad (00:15:55):
So you’re making an analogy to now a matter of fact, athletes can be identified that they’re about to get hosed because they’re totally dysfunctional, which we before never did. Right. We just saw the, the poor misfortune of the guy getting tackled and not getting up.

Henry (00:16:09):
Exactly right. So there are these, now thanks to the force plates and infrared cameras in the ceiling, they have, I think, it’s 134.4 terabytes of data from elite athletes moving around. And they have machine learning just kind of saying like, okay, this guy tore his ACL, what did it look like before? And they’re having real answers now. The data is, they’ve been doing this for a while. They have 10 years of thousands of athletes, and now you can really see, you know, what are the movements that, what does the ACL tear look like in the years before the ACL tear? There were real answers in the movement data.

Brad (00:16:42):
So this was kind of, uh, in, in course of preparing this book Ballistic, you spent a lot of time there looking at the high tech analysis. And tell us more. Let’s, let’s transition into what this, what this book’s all about.

Henry (00:16:58):
So, well, I’m a little bit, right now, my head is full of, I heard you talking to Alex Hutchinson, right? And this question of, you know, is running good for people? Right? Is itthat’s kind of what you were talking about, right? And the answer is it’s good for some people, right? I think we all agree, right? Alex is like, well, I trained for this and I can run a party long distance and feel good. And you’re like, I want to train for 400. And if you go much further be, people get kind of obsessive and running these marathons and grind their bodies to a pulp, right? Um, what, what I’m hearing and behind this is like, we don’t, it’s not the same sport for every body, right? And the force of landing, this book’s called Ballistic because it’s about being the airborne and then landing that, that’s the definition of ballistic, right?

Henry (00:17:41):
The moment of landing is the moment you’re getting these non-contact injuries, right? The forces are ridiculous. There’s an NBA player who stepped off an 18 inch box, just stepped off lands on the force plates with 11,000 Newtons of force for context. A pro boxer punching you is about a hundred Newtons. Hmm. Um, there’s some academic studies where they, people, poor people have the job of figuring out how much force it takes to fully sever the spine of a cadaver. The answer is about 3000 Newtons. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. So this NBA player without legs right, would just be destroyed falling at that rate. Right? So you need the three stack joints, ankles, knees, and hips to be your springs. Right? Some of us have that working well, some of us don’t. Right? If you have it working well, I would argue you can run, you can run till you’re old as hell.

Henry (00:18:32):
’cause you’re putting the force into your achilles and your quads and your glutes, and you can kind of bounce along. And the, the force of landing is attenuated by these brilliant soft tissues. But if, like me, I, I’m a long time runner, but I don’t use my hips very well when I land, then that same force that would be going into my glutes goes into my lower back. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. So without some improvement, my extra running, my extra miles from my ultra marathon or whatever would really destroy me. Right? So I think that it kind of, there’s an answer here. We can, we can see into this black box of movement and say, Ooh, like, Brad, you’re good to go, right? You can run a marathon over here. Let’s not, let’s let’s build up the muscles of your lower leg. Or let’s get your neurological timing different. Let’s change your hips, et cetera, before you would endeavor to do such a risky thing.

Brad (00:19:21):
That’s interesting. Where you talk about the importance of those three joints. And we talk so much with Peluva shoes that listeners have heard me talk about how, you know, we need to get back to barefoot functionality because the foot is the true technology. Not all these shoes and things that we’ve been marketed to thinking that when I put this thing on, I’m gonna jump higher or land more safely. It’s actually the opposite is true. And when we, when we encase our feet in shoes for our whole life, they become weak and dysfunctional and atrophied. And so I’m wondering if, um, is that an element of modern cutting edge, sophisticated athletic training where the athletes are putting their shoes aside for training purposes, getting their feet strong, and then of course they’re gonna slip into their basketball shoes during the game, or their spikes when they’re running in a track meet?

Henry (00:20:11):
Totally. Yeah. They, so, you know, basketball doesn’t have a lot of gear, right? But <laugh>, there’s, it’s not like hockey or, or you know, kite surfing or whatever. Like, you just walk into the gym with your shoes, right? That’s, that’s what you have. And players walk into P 3 with their shoes, and then a lot of times they’re, they keep them off for the workout. The specific reason is that one of the most dangerous foot positions that they encounter is a toes down landing. So I said that 11,000 newtons, like, like all of the biggest measurements that they encounter at P 3 come from your toes land first, and then boom, here comes your heel and it slaps down really hard. That means that like the two forces, right? Your, your torso is 80% of your weight and it’s free falling. And then there’s the earth is pretty strong and tough and immovable, right?

Henry (00:21:03):
They’re going to meet, if you go heel down through your tibia, which at one end will have the ground and the other end your knee, right? Which is a pretty delicate thing. That’s more likely if you’re in shoes that pitch you forward, right? Your 10 millimeter drop standard athletic shoes encourage you to land that way. So if you’re doing big explosive movements at P 3, they ask you to take your, your shoes off. If you’re wearing zero drop shoes, they would not ask you to take your shoes off. So, um, that’s what, that’s the kind of stuff. They have findings like this all over the place, but this is the kind of stuff where, you know, they’ll watch you and see how you move. And I, you know, I did talk to a guy, there’s a whole chapter on shoes. I talked to a guy named Dave Bond, fascinating guy. He was the head of Jordan brand. He knows all about shoes, athletic shoes. And he was like, these zero drop shoes haven’t come to basketball yet because they look weird. And people want basketball shoes to look cool, <laugh>, you know?

Brad (00:21:56):
Wow. But that’s, that’s scary. I think the same can be said for running shoes and the obsession with extreme cushioning. A lot of it’s ’cause of cultural programming. Sure. Not necessarily research. In fact, um, there is no research that running shoes, unless an impact trauma or prevent injuries. That’s from Steve Magnus. great. Uh, love that guy. Articles on science of running.com. Um, but it’s such a shocker because all you see when you flip through the magazines or wherever you’re getting your advertising, is how the new stability, motion control shoe will help you, you know, not pronate, which is a natural function of the foot to absorb impact and generate propulsion. So it is incredibly ridiculous how we’ve been brainwashed to think that we need these shoes to be functional and to be safe.

Henry (00:22:43):
I, there’s a lower extremity review article that’s an academic journal from like four or five years ago that casually mentions as an aside that no athletic shoe has ever been shown to reduce injury <laugh>. Like, do you know how much?

Brad (00:22:57):
That’s a big statement right there, man.

Henry (00:22:58):
They’ve been sold. Yeah. Whereas there is evidence they’ve made it worse, right? Mm.

Brad (00:23:02):
Um, plenty. Yeah.

Henry (00:23:04):
One of the things that’s a big deal, like a five alarm fire at P 3 is if they see you landing in what they call translation, it’s pretty common. So that it’s, they had to name it ’cause no one had a name for it. But that is landing on the outside of your foot and then rolling to the inside. So your shin goes like a windshield wiper from outside to in. A little bit of that is unremarkable, but if it’s 25 degrees, then like the injury risk is really, this is a hundred percent of NBA players who tore their ACL. And their study had this landing motion a hundred percent. And I was like, well, why would it do that? Why would your, why would your foot move like that? And at one point, one of the trainers was like, I just think it’s kind of sloppy.

Henry (00:23:46):
It’s kind of weak, right? Mm-hmm. And, and the fixes a lot a fix for a fair amount of these ground contact issues they encounter, which are a really big concern there is really strengthening the muscles of the lower leg, like the muscles below the knee. People think about the, the kind of the calf muscle that you can see is called, is the gastroc, right? That’s the one with the kind of bulb, but underneath is the soulis and the tibialis posterior. And they put a lot of focus into those two, um, and balance and coordination. And they just wanna, and plyometrics, they just wanna make it so that even if you stumble, even if you’re an NBA player gets knocked in the lane, even if you’re like spiking the ball at the volleyball net or, um, triple jumping. So that without conscious thought, you throw that foot out in a way that makes it strong and stable. The term is stiffness, ankle stiffness. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Which means it’s well positioned to engage your achilles toes up, ball your foot down. And then the achilles, if your biomechanics are reasonable, will then, you know, stretch some and pass a lot of the force into your quads and then up to your glutes with those three engaged, you can handle a ton of landing force. But if you don’t have those three engaged, then than injury risk is higher.

Brad (00:25:01):
Yeah. My sports-minded physical therapist, Dr. Jonathan Sandberg guest on the podcast, he talks about stiffness a lot. Yeah. And I’d love for you to explain, you know, we also wanna be flexible, mobile, not having this dysfunction that we associated with stiffness. So can you kind of like, yeah. Go through the whole lower body and tell us what, what do we wanna be loose, mobile and flexible? And then what do we want stiff? Or how do those things cross together?

Henry (00:25:30):
Yeah. The word stiff is just a bad word. They just shouldn’t call it that. It happens to be the biomechanical term for like, being able to return a lot of force. So, um,

Brad (00:25:40):
Rigidity, something better, some better word. Yeah.

Henry (00:25:43):
Yeah. It sounds like you haven’t stretched, right? ’cause that’s exactly what that word means, <laugh>. But, um, yeah. But yeah. So I think though, Tim nos I, I’m looking over here ’cause maybe I have the book here, but in that big lore of running book, it’s like a thousand pages of all this research from this, uh, guy in South Africa. But he, he contends that, um, some runners carry 93% of the force from one step to the next, which means you don’t have to put a lot of effort into the next step. ’cause you’re bouncing along, right? Yeah. Yeah. That’s stiffness. Yeah. Right. That’s, meanwhile, which really means they’re like rubber bands, right? Like the Achilles is the primary one, but also your glutes and your hammies and your quads, you know, are literally stretching on landing, which is stopping you from tearing up your back or your tendons in your knee, et cetera.

Henry (00:26:27):
And then they snap back and it’s a freebie, right? Some people, like, I, I do this thing that’s so dumb, which is I start to move, I can see this in my detailed assessment from them. I start to take the next step with my hips before I’ve flexed. So I’m just giving up all this free energy mm-hmm. That I could get. So meanwhile, other runners, so 93% for the top runners, other runners only carry 40% or 45% of the energy. So they have to work so much harder to run, and they’re getting more injuries, right? <laugh>. So <laugh>

Brad (00:26:59):
A double whammy,

Henry (00:27:00):
Double whammy. f

Brad (00:27:01):
If you don’t understand what Henry’s talking about right now, go on YouTube and, and, and search for Usain Bolt slow motion or, or some such video where the graceful explosiveness of a top athlete, it’s like a deer or watch watching a dog or a deer run too. They, they spring off the ground, which humans are capable of, and the best humans show. And then we can go Google a video like slow pack runners New York City Marathon. And that’s where we see the clumping and the stomping. And you hear the person coming from behind rather than this graceful, springing through life.

Henry (00:27:36):
Sound is actually a pretty good measure. Like, so when there’s a collision, this is just straight physics. I, I hate that I had to learn physics, I like slept through physics in high school. I found it was so boring. And now for this book, I’m like, oh, I gotta study physics again. But, so what we’re talking about with your, I love your YouTube assignment here, but so that Usain Bolt, those are elastic collisions. What you don’t want is like a car crash is an inelastic collision. Mm. And a pretty efficient measure of an inelastic collision is sound. So like, if you hear, if you’re going down the stairs, Don, don, don, don, don, like, I already know, it’s your heels. Like it’s, you can’t even do that without, with your, with a ball of your foot. You can’t make it that loud.

Henry (00:28:17):
This is your little home P 3 assessment, right? But, um, yeah. So you want to move like a cat, right? You wanna move, uh, the re the way you do that is with all those stacked joints working in unison, right? Like a little orchestral movement, which is, I’m not gonna tell you that I, it’s easy, but that’s what we’re focusing on. That’s what you wanna do. That’s what all the best runners do, right? All of ’em. There’s no elite runner who’s clumping. You don’t get make the Olympics with that slapping sound you’re talking about. Right? It doesn’t matter.

Brad (00:28:44):
And again, you have increased injury risk, whether you’re interested in making the Olympics or not, or just wanna finish your personal individual fitness goals. We all deserve to work on that and become more springy.

Henry (00:28:57):
Springy. Yeah. That’s the answer. And the, and also the same training, right? This is, it’s neurological training, right? This is what the, the, the moment of being springy, there’s too much happening too fast for you to manage it with your own brain, right? That’s why the plyometric training, or they have this thing at P 3 called the impulse box, where, if you’re doing it like Christian Ramirez, former UCLA quarterback who is beautiful on the thing, it looks like he’s doing like a Merengue. It’s a little platform sort of shaped like a little halfpipe, and there’s a little pattern that you move and you just wanna get faster, faster, faster, faster, faster until you blow it up and you just start again and try to go faster. Oh. And the whole point is, you, you can’t get good at it with concentration. You have to relax. Like, there’s this thing like sprinters know, right? You, you like, what did they say? Like, fast and relaxed, right? Fast and relaxed. You can’t, Usain Bolt is actually, he needs to hold the muscles of his core pretty loose, right? So that, so he can spring and not get all clenched up. And, um, so I did this impulse box training with Dr. Marcus Elliot standing uncomfortably close going,

Henry (00:30:07):
Relax, <laugh>. I was like, I’m not relaxed,

Henry (00:30:10):
Okay? But, but eventually you kind of just get used to the sound of your feet, but boom, boom, boom. And like, kind of like, that’s the way you want to do it. But, but yeah, the, the trick is you’re training these neurological systems. They already have, you have some system right now, some motor programming of how you’re gonna throw your foot out if you start to stumble, like mm-hmm <affirmative>. You wanna tweak that, you can tweak it a little, you can train it a little, you can give your system better muscles, better neurological systems, you know, better balance so that you can throw a foot out in a more likely to succeed way.

Brad (00:30:40):
That’s interesting. If we, we back up a little just to emphasize the point that like the injuries are occurring from coming back down to earth. You don’t get injured jumping up and dunking a basketball or any such thing. It’s all about the impact from landing, right?

Henry (00:30:57):
I mean, I’m sure there’s every kinda injury, right? Crazy things happen, people Yeah. Well,

Brad (00:31:01):
You jump off poorly. Yeah.

Henry (00:31:02):
Yeah, yeah. I, one guy got hurt with his catching his fingernail on the rim. I saw that looked painful. So, you know, that can happen. But no, the, the big category, like the big category preventable non-contact injuries is a hundred percent from landing in their data, right? So, um, it’s just the forces are, are massive. There’s nothing that matches it. Like literally nothing any athlete does. Uh, so, uh, there’s this guy, Yuri Shanky mm-hmm <affirmative>. And he was studying triathletes, his triathletes in, in the Soviet Union. And, you know, he had a bunch of guys who could hit the ground in their last step before the final jump of the triple jump. And I say triathletes, triple jumpers is what I meant. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. The final jump. And you can do some math on how much they weigh and how far they fly, and know that they were pushing on the ground with 300 kilograms of force, but none of them could lift 300 kilograms in the gym.

Brad (00:31:54):
Right?

Henry (00:31:55):
So, well, you know, they can, but we know they can’t. So like, what’s the deal? Right? And, and the answer is it’s super fast. Like, because you’re on the ground, you can, ’cause you’re carrying the force from the approach and doing it super fast, which unlocks just much bigger forces. All the biggest forces we manage are from this kind of stuff. Meanwhile we get trained in how to hold the bar to do a squat, make sure your form is perfect, but you’re handling way bigger forces when you jump around, right? Right. And no one gets trained in how to jump around. So that’s what they’re doing. They’re, they’re training you to, you know, handle the biggest forces you’re gonna deal with, which is from landing.

Brad (00:32:31):
So one of the themes of the book is that we generally don’t do any of this crap. Mm-hmm. As even a devoted fitness enthusiast is spending a lot of time pulling those heavy weights off the ground in the gym, in, in a very slow manner. Or we’re jogging, or maybe we’re doing something that’s high intensity. But, uh, you’re, you’re making the case that all of us deserve to integrate some of this ballistic training, which I guess generally it’s seen as whatever, like too dangerous or, or too high of an injury risk to dabble in. But again, this is gonna be the way to injury prevention overall when we get good at it.

Henry (00:33:13):
Exactly. Right. Yeah. I think it’s been, I mean, I’ve been three years writing this book and, and which means I’ve had a million conversations with people who are worried about their bodies, and everybody immediately assumes there’s something they could be doing way better. Right? Everyone’s like, oh yeah, yeah. You know, I’m, I’m doing it wrong. They just kind of come at it with this, right? They’ve got their sore hip and they haven’t called anybody and they don’t know what to do. And so they go to a massage therapist or a physical therapist or like, what do you do? And secondly, they feel like they screwed up, like their movement, right? They know that they should move better. Like they’re supposed to go to yoga, but they didn’t or whatever the thing is. So I think this is good news where it’s been kind of this dark secrets of like, you got a guy who knows about hips maybe, and only takes cash, you know, <laugh>. Yeah,

Brad (00:33:57):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Henry (00:33:58):
You know,

Brad (00:33:58):
Desperate to go get somebody that can help. Yeah,

Henry (00:34:01):
Totally. But now they’re like, no, we’re gonna make science out of this. We’re gonna really assess like how much hip external rotation do you need? And below which point is it a problem? And, the trick is you want a different owner’s manual to your body, right? So you can manage a little better. Right now, NBA players, most of them have that, but it’s coming like the, the methods of assessment are coming to phones. They’re coming to computer vision from like video feeds. And this will be the new normal. I’m totally confident that like the data set that matters will stop being MRIs and it’ll start being how you move. Hmm.

Brad (00:34:38):
Right. And we already see that at the cutting edge facilities like you described at P 3 or Dr. Jonathan, my guy worked at Altus down in Arizona, where a lot of the Olympic track and field athletes would come. But for the average person, I think it’s still within, within reach to, you know, pull up some good programming on YouTube, or my friend Dr. Grayson runs this Movement Vault where you can sign up for a subscription. And I think generally what we’re getting to is some simple assessments where if you suck at them, you can smile and realize, oh my goodness this is gonna get me injured because I can’t hold a deep squat without falling back on my butt. That means, wait,

Henry (00:35:21):
Have you been watching me? That’s like, I know <laugh>, right

Brad (00:35:23):
Before we turned on the camera, he was in the corner there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that’s a, that’s a good way to proceed where, you know, we should demand of ourselves some basic functional abilities, especially as we age and we start to get into the concerns that we have with seniors. The disturbing stat that Peter Attia has been spouting a lot, where I think it’s 38% of Americans over age 65 who fall and break a hip are dead within a year because of all the adverse consequences. They can’t get out of bed. They get weakened, they get atrophied, and then they get pneumonia and die. So falling is like the government contends that this is the number one cause of, demise and death in Americans over age 65. And it’s so ridiculous. ’cause we should be able to avoid falling in the first place. And then if we do eat it, you know, we have some functionality to make it not disastrous and not snap a bone.

Henry (00:36:17):
Yeah. The WHO says immobility is the fourth leading cause of a global death. And so, and it contributes to so many cancers, you know, heart disease, mental health problems, all things you wouldn’t even think. Right. And sleep problems. Right. So just being still is not the answer. Right. <laugh>. And so how do we get moving? I think a lot of us are in pain, right? A lot of us have either anxiety about pain or actual pain. And I think this is a little bit of a, you know, look, you can manage this a little better. It’s been confusing. You know, what, what should you be doing? I think it’s going to, the clouds are gonna part a little. For instance, hips are like such a big part of the story here. But every single athlete they’ve assessed needs help with their hips. And either they need more stability or more mobility. Mm. And you should know which club you’re in and work on it. And, so they have a little way. Do you want me to run through the little home assessment you can do for this?

Brad (00:37:11):
Oh, Sure. Yeah.

Henry (00:37:12):
Okay. So if you can hold for 30 seconds a side plank, which is a particular side plank where you make your body a big X arm elevated leg elevated, all 10 toes pointing forward body big. If you can lock that out for 30 seconds, then Marcelli to P 3 is willing to guess that your hips are stable enough. Mm-hmm. Similarly, if you can sink into a standing figure four. So stand on, say your left leg, right ankle over your left knee, and then just sit back, butt back. You’re balancing chest up. And if you can get your hips down low, like the level of your knee kind of thing, then your hips are probably mobile enough.

Brad (00:37:56):
I get you Figure four. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Yeah. You get it. People, you’re, you’re forming the letter, I mean, you’re forming the number four. It’s kind of like a popular yoga pose too. I don’t know Yeah. What the, the correct term is, but

Henry (00:38:08):
I think it starts as tree. Tree

Brad (00:38:10):
Or something. Yeah.

Henry (00:38:11):
Seated tree. Let’s call it that.

Brad (00:38:12):
A seated tree pose. Thank you very much. <laugh>, is that a 30 second hold as well or is that just being able to show that you can get to that position to

Henry (00:38:19):
Show you can get down there. Yeah. Um, and so they would do a much fuller assessment of P 3, but basically you’re gonna know if you’re working on mobility or stability and you should, you’re probably the way it usually goes is you have workout habits that focus on the one you’re good at. Right. Like the people who can really sink into that tree thing, they already go to yoga, they work on their hip mobility all the time. Right? Right. They should lift weights. This is like the joke. Right. Whereas the people who can lock out the, you know, the stable hips, like they go to CrossFit all the time, they should go to Yoga <laugh>. Right? Like,

Brad (00:38:54):
Wow, that’s heavy man. I appreciate

Henry (00:38:56):
That

Brad (00:38:56):
<laugh>. I remember, um, when I was training really hard as a pro triathlete and putting in a lot of miles running and I’d go to yoga class once a week and it was so counter to what I was doing with running and creating that stiffness and, and going straight ahead only. And it was always this battle where I’d be sore after my yoga session or I’d be sore after running and go to yoga class. But it is, it’s kind of nice to see the flourishing of the, the hybrid athlete these days where they’re showing disparate skills. Not that I’m, uh, supporting some of that ridiculous extreme stuff where they lift 500 pounds and then go run 47 miles or something. That that’s a young person’s game. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. But I think for most people, whatever their main focal passion is, there’s definitely some areas that they could sprinkle in to increase functionality and something that is not necessarily directly associated with their golf swing or whatever they love to do.

Henry (00:39:52):
Totally. Yeah. I’ve evolved, maybe this is ’cause I’m 50, but like my movement goal here is to move like a puppy playing on the beach, right. <laugh>, I want to be able to frolic and have fun. Henry

Brad (00:40:04):
Henry’s next book will be coming out in 2028. It’s called Puppy Playing

Henry (00:40:07):
On the Beach, Puppy’s on the Beach You would sell a lot of books with that, I’m pretty sure. Um, but, uh, but you wanna have fun. You wanna be playful, you want, when someone says, Hey, do you wanna blank? You wanna say yes. Right. And um, and if it’s not fun enough, I think it’s kind of unsustainable. And I used to run, you know, I used to run, I used to run, I used to care about my times a lot and you know, if I run a 5K now I know that exactly how much it’s slower than I used to be. <laugh>, you know, that’s like a little bit of a bummer. But these amorphous kind of nature-based outings feel really rewarding and fun to me and don’t come with this clock being like, you know, you’re kind of old dude <laugh> and uh, and I like that.

Henry (00:40:44):
So if you wanna be playful, I think that jives a little more with like, yeah, I’ll work on the thing my hips are bad at instead of the thing my hips are good at. ’cause like, I’m just trying to be robust enough to do fun stuff. Right. As opposed to, you know, you know, I love super competitive people. That’s my crew. But like, and I did this actually, I did a High Rocks competition, which is kind of like what you’re talking about. Oh yeah. But here’s my main takeaway to be honest. I did, it felt great. I was very excited then I did then I was a judge at the wall ball station at the end. And when the happened to be when the elite women came through and I was like, these are super humans. Like mm-hmm <affirmative>. There’s a whole different kind of strong female body around now in like big numbers. There were like a thousand women that were just totally badass. And I was like, fire me up. I was like, like I’m excited. There’s just a kind of strong woman around in that sport that’s like, you know, there was nobody in my high school who was like that. Right. And now there’s like hundreds and hundreds of these elite women who are just like, look what you guys are doing. You know, they are like capturing something. Right. That’s, we’ll see where it goes. But it’s totally badass.

Brad (00:41:53):
Yeah. It’s amazing. I mean, you have to give some votes there for being the greatest all around athletes. I think, people are probably more familiar with CrossFit and the CrossFit games and the challenges they do, but it seems like High Rocks is similar where they’re, you know, providing a lot of power explosiveness, but it’s also a huge endurance component. ’cause it’s a grueling course they go through and Yeah. These people, they’re off the charts, man.

Henry (00:42:18):
It’s, you kind of feel like, we sometimes joke, I don’t know why this has become a joke in our family, but who’s on your bank robbing team? Like, you’re gonna rob a bank who you got any people who don’t talk too much, people who like, you know, have some special skills, whatever. Like as I was judging, like, oh, everybody here can be my bank robbing team. Like, we’ll go rob a bank.

Brad (00:42:33):
Oh my God,

Henry (00:42:34):
<laugh>.

Brad (00:42:35):
I love that man. I’m gonna start using that.

Henry (00:42:38):
It’s an interesting way to see the world, you know? Yeah, yeah,

Brad (00:42:41):
Yeah. For sure. I mean, all it, all it, uh, you know, designates in one in one line, it’s huge. Yeah. You don’t want some, some, some pop off that’s not gonna be a team player. ’cause they’re gonna, you know, drive away in the getaway car too early and so forth. Yeah.

Henry (00:42:54):
Yeah. I gotta know, we’re good. Like we gotta be on the same page. Yeah, man. You know, and you can’t, you can’t, you gotta do your job right. You gotta like, we’re counting on you. Yeah. Love it. But they, that’s a good place to shop. Go to Howard’s competition, get to those elite women. Let’s go rob some banks. <laugh> <laugh>.

Brad (00:43:09):
You said something earlier about dirty money and sport.

Henry (00:43:12):
Oh my Goodness.

Brad (00:43:12):
I’d love to know more about that. What you mean.

Henry (00:43:15):
Yeah, yeah. Oh goodness. So, it started like this for me where, you know, Jeffrey Epstein was in the news like crazy, but he had like, I don’t know if you remember all this, but it turned out that for the latter part of his, I was gonna say career, but like whatever he had going on, he was, this is not, this part’s not controversial. He was funded by Leon Black, who’s a private equity titan. He’s from Apollo Global, which is the source of the billions that fund multiple NBA team owners. And so I felt like it was kinda my job to go, go, what’s going on there? And you know, I thought I would do like a little six-part series and it turned into like a 25 part series of just, you know, global bags, basically <laugh>, you know, just like offshore money, dirty banks, dirty lawyers. It just goes on and on and on. And it’s kind of like the real world, you know? It is true. It was just, it’s, yeah. Talk about a topic that people didn’t want me to bring up at dinner. You know, like I was just full of oligarchs and CIA and drug running and private jets and just, you know, yeah. We could talk about it, but it would be <laugh> take a long time for me to kind of unload everything I’m carrying in my head right now.

Brad (00:44:29):
Do you think it has any adverse influence on, on sports itself? Or is this just sort of a dark side behind the scenes?

Henry (00:44:36):
It’s a great question. I do think it has adverse influence. I think that the valuations of teams are so high that like regular business people can’t afford them. So somebody who just loves sports can’t afford to buy a team. ’cause a lot of the value of the team is in sport washing they call it. Right? Like, gussy up the reputation of the billionaire behind it, right? So, you know, Roman and Ramo seen as an unlikeable oligarch, but he overpays for Chelsea and now he’s the Chelsea owner, Roman or Ramo. Right. Um, there’s a, uh, the famous arms dealer tried to buy the Utah Jazz and it’s like he was, you know, this is what you do <laugh> if you’re, if you’re super dirty, if you’re sitting on a pile of dirty money, sports are a great investment. ’cause they come with fans, right. It comes with people who are just going to wish you luck, wish you well.

Brad (00:45:29):
Right.

Henry (00:45:29):
And so I I feel like

Brad (00:45:31):
Image washing. Yeah.

Henry (00:45:32):
Yeah. And teams are poorly run by and large. Yeah. I mean, there’s just, and a lot of ’em have inattentive owners who like, it’s not really their business, it’s not really what they’re doing. They’re off skiing or night clubbing or whatever, yachting. Right. Whatever billionaires do. Meanwhile, the team’s like hardworking general managers trying to get their attention to approve this really well thought out trade, but they can’t get the call through, you know, this kind of stuff. It’s

Brad (00:45:54):
Like, well, it’s also interesting, we were just talking about this the other day in Sacramento, California, where we have the kings, one of the, you know, historically worst franchises of all sports, if you take like a 25 year window where they miss the playoffs, you know, 15 years in a row, they made the playoffs for a few years and then they, they missed him again. And, um, you either have that absentee owner that you described that doesn’t know anything and doesn’t care enough, or you have on the flip side a sports owner who, who is a, you know, a huge success in business with a huge ego and thinks that they automatically know something about running a sports team and intervenes and, and offers their opinion and, and drives things like trades, signing athletes, signing coaches, general managers. And it’s ridiculous because, you know, the best owner, I think like Jerry Bus maybe the best of all time, or Mark Cuban gets some votes there where they were, you know, totally hands-on. They loved the experience, it was the centerpiece of their life, and they trusted seasoned sports executives to make the best decisions. And they just supported the players and the team and created a family atmosphere of trust and appreciation.

Henry (00:47:04):
Totally. Yeah. Sing it. You know, I’ve spent my whole life in this sports world, and Mo you know, behind the scenes, most of the really smart people who’ve worked in the league are like, you know, it’s a freak show, right? They’re working for maniacs. Right. And, and this is the big thing that what you’re looking for if you’re really good at running a team is like, where can I get some protection from an insane billionaire who’s gonna walk in and ruin everything at, at some moment? There’s a actually one of the craziest moments in that, it was on video in Sacramento, which was this Stauskas moment. Do you know what I’m talking about?

Brad (00:47:38):
<laugh>? Uh, Nick Stauskas was the, he was a shooting guard. I remember we drafted him, the Kings did.

Henry (00:47:44):
It was a terribly high pick and it really didn’t work out. And the moment that they decided who they were gonna draft was owner, Vivek, on video when, you know, between like Stauskas and everyone’s like, and every and all the <laugh>

Brad (00:47:56):
Rest people became a meme or something.

Henry (00:47:58):
Yeah. And like, they knew it was a bad, they’re like, Staukas, you know, and it was just like, yell it with me Staushas. And it’s just like, it’s terrible pick. It was just, or the Sixers had one where the brand new billionaire guy watched a workout with a player named Arnett Moultrie? yeah. It’s, it, they’re, they’re little monarchies. The NB teams are little monarchies and you know, that’s not a great form of government, you know, it’s just <laugh> you get ahead by, you know, making the king believe that he’s omnipotent. Right. And, but you wanted to get ahead by winning games. It would be a better way to get ahead. Right. But they just, or I know a guy who used to work for a team, and if they were, they would put together like a, a complicated set of transactions so they could get out of salary cap hell and become legitimately good in the future. But the way they would sell it to the owner is they would just say, Hey, we can get a former dunk champ, look at these highlights. And he’d be like, yeah, gimme that guy. Yeah. Yeah.

Brad (00:48:55):
And like he had to trick the owner in order to do your economically viable. Yeah. Oh my goodness. What’s fascinating to me is like the sophistication of the recruiting and the scouting and the evaluations, but it seems like still, were many steps behind optimal when these guys slipped through the cracks or these over-hyped guys, what, what’s your, what’s your opinion on, on that whole scene?

Henry (00:49:21):
Well, like the best player in the world right now is Nicola Yokich and he was drafted in the second round. Literally every team could have had him. Right? Like every single team passed on it. Yeah. So that’s a miss, right? Um, there’s a few different things going on there. I think, one is the jobs of the people in the front office are very short. So they may not, they might think Nick is a great long-term play, but they probably won’t be around in four years when he starts being good.

Brad (00:49:48):
Brutal. It’s like, performing for the quarterly earnings report instead of doing the long-term best interest of the company. Yeah. It’s

Henry (00:49:57):
Mostly that, right? It’s mostly that the

Brad (00:49:59):
So that’sThat’s brutal to hear. That’s filtered into sports, man. I’m, I’m, that’s heartbreaking. Really?

Henry (00:50:04):
Yeah. You can’t really afford to lose the press conference, right? If they, everyone thinks you screwed up, then you’re out, you’re gonna get fired, right? Yeah. Um, yeah, they do. They’re very, the, the billionaires are very sensitive to public sentiment. So if everybody thinks that it’s stupid, even if it’s smart, then it’s stupid. I think that’s a big part of it. The other thing is, this one I don’t blame this much for, but the biggest factor in Nickla Yoic going from, I think he was the 40 something pick to best player in the world, is his improvement. Right? He, he, he worked on stuff and it’s hard to predict, but not impossible to predict there are, but I think if you’re shopping for, how good is your team at helping him improve, then almost anybody who comes in the door, the Thunder right now are the best team in the NBA and clearly the best at taking like a mediocre defensive player, making them a good defensive player and a mediocre shooter, and making them a good shooter. And so they, they have the kinds of players that every team could have had, but they’ve made them better and they’re gonna win lots of championships because of it. Right. So that’s really, I think the most important factor in being an elite team nowadays is just player development, which is a little bit of a lost art in the NBA. We just aren’t, most teams just aren’t good at it at all.

Brad (00:51:18):
Well, they have no time or energy to do so because they’re trying to win every game. And there’s guys sitting on the edge of the bench. I remember watching JR Smith about 20 years ago, early in his career, and we got to the arena early, and he was out there going full gas with one of the trainers for maybe a 40 minute session where he’s draining threes and dunking. I’m like, who is this guy? Yeah. He’d come right from the high school to the pros. I’m like, this guy’s gonna be amazing. He’s better than anyone we’re gonna see later tonight. But he wasn’t getting any minutes in the games. And so he had this unique one-on-one workout where if you’re gonna sit all night, we might as well, you know, work on some of your skills. And it was, it was kind of neat to see that player was on his own path and he eventually became a star, maybe, maybe underperformed for his talent level.

Brad (00:52:04):
But, I’m teeing up a question here as I, as I ramble, but you know, when you’re, when you’re thinking about investing in this multimillion dollar economic asset and you put him through the combine and you put him through the evaluation and the private workout, but like, is there another level that we could go to in the future where, I don’t know, like you hire a private investigator to go hang around campus and see who the person’s buddies are and whether they have good study habits or whether they’re polite to the Uber driver that takes ’em to the hotel for their pre-draft workout? That’s the part that is, is curious to me, because these, these players of like high character, high work ethic, they’ve been passed over for decades because they didn’t have the physicality of the guy who was jumping out of the gym. And it seems like at some point we should kick into another gear and say, what really makes a champion athlete is that work ethic, that resilience, that family oriented, well balanced lifestyle, or whatever you wanna call it.

Henry (00:53:02):
It’s happening. They do that. They have those private investigators, but I think it’s very tough. There’s so many variables in not just projecting this player’s progress, but also how they’re gonna fit in the team. And there’s just some people, like I’m super lucky I, in my business, True Hoop and partnered with David Thorpe who invented this like private training business where he has, he has, he has 13 NBA clients in the playoffs right now. So these are amazing players who he talks to every day with like, here’s your game plan for taking on, you know, tonight’s opponent, here’s what we’re looking, working on short term, medium term, long term. And, and he has a weird, I don’t honestly don’t understand it, but he can watch a player, like he could watch that JR Smith workout you’re talking about. And he would immediately say, oh, oh, like, you know, because of the nature of the league and who you’re gonna have to guard, we need to right now focus on something that when he said it, we’d all be like, oh, that’s so smart.

Henry (00:53:57):
But quite commonly JR’s assistant coach from the team wouldn’t have said that thing to him. Mm-hmm. And so, you know, the, the game is not the most complex game, but it’s pretty complicated. It happens really fast and you want to have these little habits baked in that you have to train. And you know, someone like JR you know, he probably could have been the next Michael Jordan, but also could have been out of the league just based on, you know, does he help the team win? Which is based on, it’s like, you know, big brain, a whole bunch of little moments that can you master this one and that one, can he guard this guy or that guy and can he, you know, drive this driver into that help defender? And it happens so fast. It’s hard to, hard to notice in real time if he’s that guy. But I think this is what the thunder are doing really well. I’m rooting for them just ’cause it’s so fun to see, you know, Aaron Wiggins and Isaiah Joe and these players that every team could have had like on the court as they’re out scoring the best teams in the league by 20. ’cause they’re doing all these little things well, like that’s, yeah. There’s no reason every team couldn’t have that kind of player development. Right,

Brad (00:54:56):
Right. And, and we still obsess, especially the fans with just buying a championship by paying massive dollars for superstars. And we’ve been seeing now that it simply doesn’t work, which is kind of refreshing, in my opinion, that you can’t just go pick and pull the guys from the All star game and form a lineup and, and and dominate.

Henry (00:55:16):
That’s the best. Yeah. They, LeBron’s generation of players, so he’s 40 now who were very influential in the union, right. And they, they changed the rules so that their generation of players could earn a tremendous amount. They were very underpaid when they were like 25, and so they fixed it, but they’re getting now, basically these super max contracts are only available to older players. And so it particularly screws the teams that are trying to assemble superstars, right? Like the Phoenix Suns were like, oh, let’s get, they got three superstar players getting these huge contracts and they tied my young rebuilding Portland Trailblazers team I grew up rooting for was, I think 36 wins this year. So they have the most expensive team in the league. And it just doesn’t work because you’re getting old players. It’s just not, you know, this is a super explosive athletic game and you don’t wanna be 34. There’s a few players who can still

Brad (00:56:11):
Yeah, LeBron training his butt off and doing everything right. Yeah. Yeah.

Henry (00:56:15):
But mostly not, right? Mostly you don’t wanna be 34, mostly you want to be 26. It’s way better <laugh>, you know? So, um, that’s, I think that’s the problem is that these superstar assembly teams are old teams and, and expensive teams, and you’re just not gonna be the best in the league like that.

Brad (00:56:31):
Do you think there’s any waning of motivation in modern day NBA ballers because they’ve bagged so much money that they literally have no financial incentive anymore to, to continue? But you know, they’re out there on the court and I’m sure they don’t mind getting the paycheck, but it seems different than perhaps in a different generation where, you know, you could be set for life if you really worked hard and, and grinded that career to the maximum, which we still see in other sports like golf or, you know, tennis or something where, you know, you could be gone tomorrow unless you win a tournament.

Henry (00:57:07):
This question is a good one and it makes me mad at the league. <laugh>. Lemme explain why. So, we see players not playing super hard and then we have playoff intensity this time of year when we see what it looks like when they do play super hard, right? So it could be that there are some, you know, people get fat and happy. That’s a thing that could happen, but I’ve never encountered it, right? Mm-hmm. Like, they make the NBA, the stats are like about a billion people play basketball on planet Earth and 350 make the NBA. It’s, you’re, you’re more likely to be an American who’s in the US Senate than a basketball player who’s in the NBA, right? So they have these amazing jobs. It’s not just money for them, it’s also, you know, you roll through life as a, as a minor god, a minor deity because you’re in the NBA and just outside the NBA, nobody cares, right?

Henry (00:58:01):
It’s a, it’s just so I think they really, really wanna do well. And mostly, you know, like this guy David Thpo was talking about, he sometimes we’ll meet his players in person ’cause they’re, he is always talking to them remotely ’cause they’re all over the place. But when they meet in person, he’s like, Hey, we should have a a, a beer or a glass of wine and like no one will have a glass of wine with him because in season it’s just too intense. Wow. They’re so hardcore. They are just lean athletic machines. Every single one of ’em. They just have to do so much work. So it just doesn’t, I think what we’re seeing is just that this season’s stupidly designed so that going super hard doesn’t work. And I think it feeds into this idea that like, oh, they’re lazy, but like, I think it’s actually like the behind the scenes. I think that’s just totally wrong. I think that they’re wildly hardworking and just kind of tired.

Brad (00:58:48):
Love it, Henry. That is a really nice thing to say, and I think it’s dead on accurate. And I think a lot of the fans that chat on the internet or wherever they’re spouting their opinion where they, they don’t know anything. We should take your words to heart. And I, I appreciate that. ’cause um, yeah, these guys generally are performing at the highest level of human athleticism and they’re <laugh>. If you think they’re dogging it, why don’t you go out there and try for a few minutes to, you know, to, to run at that pace for an NBA game. Uh, so with the book Ballistic, um, let’s, you know, let’s, let’s close with a nice, nice plug here about what the medium or the serious fitness enthusiast is gonna learn and, uh, what kind of journey they’re gonna go through when they grab this book.

Henry (00:59:36):
Your body’s super well designed to move. It wants to, and it’s well designed for it. You can bounce around, jump around. I think we all kind of know there’s something that you have on the horizon that you were thinking about doing. Maybe you wanna go play pickleball, maybe you’re thinking about signing up for a 5K, maybe you wanna go ballroom dancing, and I think do that, right? You can do more than you think. And yeah, there might come a a time where you need to do a little PT or some kind of prepping. And there’s some basic principles in the book with illustrations of, you know, the most common sources of injury are these issues with your hips, these issues with your feet. You know, yeah. Pay a little attention to that. Pay work on your weaknesses, but mostly I think get ready to be a puppy on the beach, right? Get ready to be a person who says yes when I say, do you wanna come play kickball or whatever, right? Let’s, let’s do fun stuff.

Brad (01:00:24):
Love it. The book is called Ballistic: The New Science of Injury Free Athletic Performance. I can’t wait. It’s gonna get me further focused on the benefits of doing that type of exercise as I battle my minor Achilles injuries and realize that, uh, we didn’t really get to this, but maybe this is a good closing statement for you to comment on that. We’ve been socialized to think like if you get a neck or a ache in pain or, or something that you sit around and rest and cross your fingers and then hopefully you’ll magically return to the court or the, the, the trail and everything will be fine. And it seems like that’s now getting blown outta the water. Henry’s shaking his head if you’re watching on video, but, now it’s a whole different deal, huh?

Henry (01:01:10):
I love this. Doctor in San Francisco, Rachel’s Offness, and she’s a pain psychologist. She has the whole chapter that focuses on her findings. And her thing is, we have to separate acute injuries from chronic injuries. We have the impulse to retreat, right? The, the wounded animal will go off and be alone with your acute injury, your bleeding wound or whatever. Right? Fine, it works great for that. We’re treating works for that. But for your chronic injuries, it’s like the only way it gets better is you have to move out of pain, right? You have to convince your, your brain can send the same pain signals anywhere if, if you, if you are convinced that this will hurt you, your body will send a pain signal. Like, it’s like pain is your brain’s opinion that you’re in danger. So movement is the way to change your brain’s opinion. You’re gonna show it like, okay, I’m okay to walk up this hill. I’m okay to, yeah, to, you know, jump a little bit or whatever it is.

Brad (01:02:01):
But where is that fine line? For example, if I feel that little twinge in my Achilles and I’m wondering should I participate in the workout or not? I don’t want to be King Wimp of the planet and not do anything till I feel perfect, but I also don’t want to aggravate things and bring, bring further, uh, you know, trauma to the area that’s, that’s not right.

Henry (01:02:23):
So my today answer is, um, <laugh> today,

Brad (01:02:26):
Tomorrow, tomorrow will be different. But like

Henry (01:02:27):
The technology will come that you could just, like, I think you wanna see how you land generally, right? Mm-hmm. Are the three stack joints of your landing working in unison. How much force is on your Achilles is really the question, right? They could tell you that, they could tell you that in 20 minutes if you went to Santa Barbara, right? Like, and if you, if you have wildly big forces on your Achilles, then yeah, you probably don’t wanna, which would come from, the common way that would happen would be, you know, you’re not using your hips properly, which is very common. And, and so you’re disproportionately stressing the other joints. But on the other hand, a lot of things are sore that are just not that dangerous, right? It happens. And in which case you can move out of pain by continuing to do that and convincing your brain that it’s okay. And I’m sorry that I can’t, I would love to tell you that I could assess you from here, but I’m not even a doctor <laugh>. Yeah. So, well,

Brad (01:03:18):
It’s developing that philosophy and then going and seeking expert guidance, I think is, is the way to go here. Especially the more, you know, devoted and the passionate you get about living a healthy act of energetic lifestyle. There’s a lot of people that are just, you know, slaves to whatever ache and pain they’re feeling and then limiting their, their, um, their, their options and continuing to narrow, narrow, narrow where they, you know, they can’t do much. As the years go by,

Henry (01:03:46):
Everybody gets stuff, right? Everybody has something that’s sore. And I think the trick is you wanna make ’em in Marcus’s word, speed bumps, right? You wanna make it rather than like, oh my gosh, I’m on the shelf for six months. No, no. You wanna be generally strong. You wanna generally move well, you wanna have good command of your joints, and then when something comes up, all right, you gotta take a weak deal with that rather than yeah. Six months.

Brad (01:04:09):
Yeah. Well, what I’ve also experienced, which is another great insight to kind of wrap this up is, when I do get some, some problem like my Achilles is, uh, feeling hot after workouts lately, uh, when I further devote myself to the single leg calf raises on the slant board holding the kettlebell, um, it actually gets better. So the more I move, the more blood flow, the more devotion I have to working this injured area, of course, in a sensible manner where it’s not bringing on, you know, further, further pain and, and dysfunction. But it’s not fun to work in injured Achilles doing single leg calf raises, holding weight, but it’s the way to heal. And that’s been a real eye-opener for me to completely, you know, shatter this old mindset where it’s wait, wait, wait, cross your fingers and then go for your first run in six weeks. In the old days, the runners would just lay off. Like, when I was in college, I got injured, I sat around and, you know, wasted time, and then went back to the track and tried to run a mile. And, that was not, um, you know, that was not an optimal way to proceed to higher levels of performance.

Henry (01:05:19):
Yeah. Like, and conceivably your Achilles issue is because you’re have poor mobility in your hips, right? Six weeks of sitting is gonna bring your hip mobility <laugh> even worse to zero. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Like, um, yeah, but you’re doing it. You’re doing this is exactly what the kind of thing they’d recommend. And the sous one of those muscles I mentioned, it improves the blood flow. Like, it, it draws the blood, it pumps the blood back up to your heart. So as you’re doing your CPH raises with your weights, you’re, you’re permanently improving the blood flow through this part of your body where you want to have more blood flow, right?

Brad (01:05:52):
Getting healthy, all right

Henry (01:05:53):
And healthy. Yeah.

Brad (01:05:54):
Henry, how do we connect with you? I know we can buy Ballistic anywhere books are sold.

Henry (01:05:59):
HenryAbbott.com is my author website where there’s a newsletter all inspired by the book called Writing Activity and all the places I’m doing talks and media and blah, blah blah on there. And you can also order the book from anywhere you wanna order it, including your local bookshop on, uh, my last name is A-B-B-O-T-T. People don’t like to give you that last t, but henry abbott.com will be the place to go.

Brad (01:06:22):
Henry Abbott, everyone Ballistic:l the New Science of Injury Free Athletic Performance. I hope you enjoy it. Thanks for watching listening to the show.

Brad (01:06:32):
Thank you so much for listening to the B.rad Podcast. We appreciate all feedback and suggestions. Email podcast@bradventures.com and visit brad kearns.com to download five free eBooks and learn some great long cuts to a longer life. How to optimize testosterone naturally, become a dark chocolate connoisseur and transition to a barefoot and minimalist shoe lifestyle.