SHAWN STEVENSON: Today you're going to get access to some of the biggest secrets that are most prestigious, high performing professional athletes are using to have the bodies and the performance. That is awe inspiring for so many of us. We're gonna learn from one of the leading strength and conditioning coaches in the world. He's currently working with the Detroit Pistons basketball team, which has seemingly come outta nowhere and just blown the roof off of the NBA charged into the playoffs and made an incredible run prior to this. Yes, he's had incredible success with athletes at Stanford and athletes at the University of Texas, but he was working with the Phoenix Sons basketball team, and when he came on board.

Just so happens they went to the NBA finals. 

Now, I'm not saying that this is because of our special guest, but the synchronicity is pretty amazing. He has some incredible insights he's gonna share with you that you can utilize in your own life. But also if you know any athletes, this is priceless, priceless information. If you have kids who are athletes, friends, family, colleagues, this is information to share. Because this is beyond the cutting edge. This individual, not only are his strategies being used, and dare I say, copied by many organizations, he knows what's coming next. And so listen intently, pick up some of these insights because this is a masterclass on training for high performance. Before we get to our special guests, let's check out the Apple Podcast Review of the Week. 

ITUNES REVIEW: Another five star review titled Invaluable by Empowermenta. I'm so grateful to Shawn and the Model Health Show team for the education and inspiration. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Thank you so very much for leaving that review for me and the Model Health Show over on Apple Podcast. I truly do appreciate that. If you're listening on Apple Podcast, please leave a review for the show. It just takes a few minutes. Share your heart. Share your voice or if you're listening on Spotify, you can also leave a comment below each episode. Share your voice there, YouTube channel, no matter where you're listening, please share your heart.

Share your voice. It really does mean a lot. And without further ado, let's get to our special guest and topic of the day. Cory Schlesinger is a world-class coach in the world of sports performance. He served as the director of performance for over nine years at the highest level of collegiate athletics and is now entering his fifth season in the same capacity in the NBA. In his time, coach Schlesinger has revolutionized in-season training for team sport athletes, and his strategies are currently being adopted, practiced and researched around the world. He's served in a leadership position for the Phoenix Suns, where they made an NBA finals appearance and won the regular season title setting multiple franchise records.

He's trained multiple Olympic gold medalists, NFL players, UFC fighters won a national championship with Stanford Men's Golf and served as a sports nutritionist for Major League soccer's, San Jose Earthquakes. He's absolutely overflowing with insights, tools, and strategies. Let's dive into this incredible conversation to understand how to perform at our very best and to train smarter with Coach Cory Schlesinger. I'm just trying to get a feel for the vibes of the room right now. We got Seahawks, the Nightmare on El Street, and then we got Absolute beast here in the chair. Cory, I've been excited about this conversation all day, man. Good to see.

CORY SCHLESINGER: I appreciate it. I'm really excited to be here.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. So I wanna talk about training. What are the biggest mistakes that you think athletes and coaches are making when it comes to training right now? 

CORY SCHLESINGER: I think the biggest mistakes they're making is they're, they're compartmentalizing the technical, tactical and physical aspects of development. So for example, like a technical session would be a skill session, right? Like working on shooting or working on pitching. Then the tactical aspect, which is practice. That's what they do as a group. Yeah. And then of course the physical training. And what they do is they compartmentalize those and they think of them as separate stressors. And the reality is it's like, no, no, no, no, no.

It's all physics and physiology. They're all stressors to the body. They're just done in different ways, but they still have an output and an input. And so when I look at how, why do we compartmentalize those? Well, that's when we start stacking the wrong stressors on top of each other. So then they're conflicting opposed to complimenting one another. Yeah. And that's what I care about. How do we organize this ecosystem so that whether it's physical training or technical and tactical aspects of sport, they're actually complimenting each other for the closest thing we can get to optimization. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Mm. That's fascinating. You know, obviously the beliefs around training have changed dramatically in just a few decades. I remember having a great conversation with Tim Grover.

CORY SCHLESINGER: Yep.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Who worked with Kobe and Michael Jordan and, you know, and when he shared that they would lift weights before the game, I thought he was lying. Like, for real, you know, and he, he, he told me multiple times, but I just like, that doesn't sound right. But the way he was going about it was different. It wasn't the typical weight training session that we might conjure up in our minds where we're going and kind of obliterating our muscles. They were doing this in a specific way to help to gain performance. And so this is the way that you're doing this and you're structuring things.

How can we help gain performance while advancing that physical literacy and strength. And so this concept of microdosing exercise was brought to me by our mutual friend in Seima and Mark Bell. These are my guys. Great humans. And you know, this was a couple years ago and when I messaged in Seima about you, he was like, that's the guy who I learned it from. And so if you could, can you share the what, first of all, what is microdosing exercise and how can we look at adding that in as a strategy for ourselves and also as advanced athletes? 

CORY SCHLESINGER: For sure. So microdosing in itself is a concept of just spreading out the stressors, rather it's resistance training, physical or skill and tactical sessions. So essentially what we wanna do is, what you see in a typical MBA environment is they lift two times a week. And that sounds good, right? But if we those what can be considered mega doses, right. So then you have to surf the curve, speed, power, strength, accessory work all in one session. Well, there is a consequence to that, or there are symptoms that are gonna be related to that, which is doms or delayed onset muscle soreness or neural fatigue.

When we're in an 82 game season, it's pretty hard to pinpoint when to do that without affecting the thing that we care about the most, which is end game performance. So instead of hitting all those variables or multiple variables in one session, we're gonna spread 'em out. And so now instead of doing a 30 to 45 minute lift, we're doing 10 to 15 minute lifts. But what that does is allows us to actually train with more intense, with more speed, more power, more strength, because you're only tapping one or two exercises and then you're gonna exhaust it. And within that period of time, I mean, you go to the gym and say, Hey man, you only got 15 minutes to get your heaviest set of back squats.

You're probably not gonna be able to exhaust yourself. But you'll be able to come back the next day and go, I think I can do that again. Or I think I can continue to train opposed to, man, my legs are shot, man, my body feels sore. So this idea of microdosing is truly just taking all these variables and spreading them out, and then more importantly, intentionally putting them around practice or around the game so that we're complimenting those stressors or complimenting those events.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Can you give me, we got my son here, my 13-year-old superstar basketball player son, and you know, he's working with his AAU team. They've got a couple practices a week. Heavy loaded game weekends, as you know, which is, you know, that's debatable if that's even good in the first place, but it, it is what it is. And if we're looking at an athlete having a couple that, we'll just say a student athlete, even college, right? High school, and college and they're having, we'll just say five practices a week. How would we structure intelligently those, those physical training inputs, right? With lifting with plyometrics? What would that look like as far as like, you know, that they got their practice.

CORY SCHLESINGER: Right.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Where do we place those respective training modalities? 

CORY SCHLESINGER: So ideally when it comes to, let's just say we're doing for general physical qualities, ideally I wanna do potentiation before they do their actual practice because I want them to have the motor running, if you will. I want them to be the ru the the rubbers ready, hit the track and we're gone. So ideally we're doing more of our speed and power work, pre-practice, and then post practice, whatever they have left in the tank, that's when we're going for our eccentrics, our heavier loads and then obviously some accessory work 'cause we then we'll get more of a peripheral fatigue or muscular endurance. And so that's an easy way of structuring it just from a day-to-day standpoint. Sprinting, plyometrics, anything from a potentiation standpoint before the event. And then post the event, you can hit your heavy ISOs, your heavy eccentrics or your accessory work.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Got it. Got it. And again, this is something that we could all take and put into our own training, you know, respectively, you know. Especially again, if we are even weekend warrior, you know, and, and just kind of training for our particular thing that maybe we're interested in. You know, maybe it's basketball, maybe it's tennis, whatever the case might be. Golf.

CORY SCHLESINGER: Yep.

SHAWN STEVENSON: And I think that this really does, does this have a lot of crossover for those kind of sports? 

CORY SCHLESINGER: I think a hundred percent. I think in any form or fashion, there's something that could be taken away from it. For example, even though if you're playing golf, you still need to do a warmup. You are rotating your spine at X amount of miles per hour. That's a lot of velocity. Now people look at golf as an old person's game, or tennis even. But when you see it at the highest level, nah. At these guys are becoming so physically fit so they can optimize their golf game. So if you're doing all of this input, you better believe, you better get ready for some output.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. There's certain people that come to mind who brought that into it in a major way, like Tiger Woods obviously comes to mind. And it was like so counterculture to be strength training at that level that he was doing it. And look at the results. 

CORY SCHLESINGER: I mean now it's a whole wave, right? Bruce Lee brought the weights to martial arts super early and that's where you find it very interesting, where track and field did it, martial arts did it, and then football is, that's where it started. And now in team sports basketball, it's becoming a thing. Now, cult or iron is a part of the culture of basketball, which is super cool because that's what we want. I mean, look at these, we're getting 20 year careers now in the NBA. I mean, that's fascinating. You couldn't imagine that years prior. So just, just think what could have happened with some of these careers that you've seen.

Like Alan Iversson, one of my favorite players of all time thought the weight room was like the getting the flu to a certain degree, he's not wrong. The reason why I say that is because, well, what kind of weight training were they doing? What was he exposed to before? What I always say is, the athlete's always right. They are always right, but you have to find a way to make it work for them. And that's where I think people mess up. They don't have that latitude, they don't have that pliability to make it work for the athlete. Let's just say he hated the weight room. Well, I think calisthenics are a great place to still get strong.

I mean, mountain climbers are some of the most strongest human beings, in my opinion, relatively. You think that would've helped out Allen Iverson, I'm not saying mountain climbing, but that grip strength and those long lever ISOs, man, I think that would've added maybe another contract to the end of his career. There's no telling what could have happened, but that's where you always gotta meet the athlete where they're at and what they're willing to do, and then you get what you want, then you lead 'em to what they need. And that's where there's a lot of different modalities to get that done. But I think we get a little shortsighted on our way is the right way.

Reality is the athlete's way is the right way. That's why they're here. So how do we create a reservoir or a toolbox to pull from so that we can still get that stress response adaptation, but in a way that they're willing to receive it consistently? 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Mm. Let's, since you opened up this door, let's talk about, again, the athlete is always right, how strength could actually take away from your game. Like that doesn't sound like those two things can go together. But if you're training a certain way, I would imagine that this could have some effects on your game that you're, you're maybe not happy about. 

CORY SCHLESINGER: I could not agree more with this statement. Like, this one's huge for me because there's all these compressive strategies like barbell bench press, barbell squat, barbell deadlift. We love those lifts 'cause we like lifting weights, but they are unbelievably compressive. Now for shorter. You know, positions like for us that we can move those loads. That's why we like 'em, right? Because we get to move load. When you have someone who has a short torso, but a femur, the length of me, deadlift is a far pull, right?

A squat is a long way down. Now I look at it like this. When you watch an athlete, trainer, you expose them to exercises for the first time. If it looks like it's painful or it just doesn't look right, I look at it as you're feeding them a virus, you're feeding them a sickness. So then you look at, well now it's exercise selection. How do I put them in positions to make it clean so that it actually looks like more vitamins for the body, or medicine for the body? So that's where you just elevate a heel. Next thing you know, they're sitting down in a nice squat, vertical torso, knees, going over the toes, whatever we're looking for.

This is where I think the rubber hits the road, where you get athletes that buy in if they feel this compressive force. I don't think there and, and it's like, ah, this just doesn't feel fluid or, right. Well then how are you gonna load that over time without having something pop up? And that's where, you know, lately, I probably catch a little flack for this, but machines, I'm all about machines. Like the more skilled the athlete is, the more specialized the athlete is. I lean into machines more than anything 'cause for me, what do I care about the most? Stress, response, adaptation. Now can we argue that a back squat could get, yield you more whatever than a leg press? Absolutely. But that is for maximally moving weight.

Not for playing NBA basketball because they already do that through movement, skill efficiency. So that's a whole nother word of performance that I'm hoping that we evolve to. But right now we're still stuck in the stone age of bigger, faster, stronger. And so back to where strength training will actually limit someone, is those compressive forces through those shorter ranges of motion just to move heavyweight. Well, that's now going to get them a smaller range of motion, right? So don't get me wrong, that's great for moving maximal load, but if they're. Skill is to allow them to get their appendage, appendages, excuse me, as far away from their body as possible, like a pitcher. And there's a fluidity aspect to execute the skill, like shooting a basketball, maybe these compressive forces aren't exactly good for what they're trying to accomplish. So that's where some of these, like longer length and, and like calisthenics could actually get us stronger without sacrificing our skillset. Mm. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: It makes sense. It makes complete sense. But I, you know, this, as a coach, we tend to come in with our thing, right? And this is the way that you do things. This is the training format, and there are appropriate places for that. You know, especially if you're dealing in , you know, volume and you've got like a lot of athletes at one time in certain situations, you know? But if, if we're talking about these high levels, it's gonna be far more per personalized. And what I hear is you're kind of regressing from. These kind of more advanced, maybe even risky type of exercises.

CORY SCHLESINGER: So regression is the key word there. And we're regressing exercises for the most highly skilled athletes in the world. And you would think the exact opposite. You would think progressing. But if I can't get load because of the progression of the exercise, now I'm sacrificing the physiology that I'm trying to get. Once again, stress response adaptation. If I can't get 400 pounds on a guy's back squat, then I'm probably not moving the needle from a physiology standpoint because I need that load. But if I can't get that load because they're limited by their skill of the exercise, then what am I doing it? Then it's more for me.

My guy's back squatting, my guy's front squatting, my guy's, whatever. Right? Then that's where the ego comes in. Now, in my early career, if you watched our lifts, it looked like a weightlifting hall, and that's how I became kind of known early in my career was we were snatching cleaning, jerking, and these were guys that are seven foot tall with seven foot four wingspans, and they were looking very competent, which was like, oh man, this guy's a great strength coach.

No, I was good at teaching weightlifting exercises. Once I started getting more sophisticated and getting asset access to technologies and force plates, motion capture, you start realizing, wow, I'm actually like. Turning them into external rotation opposed to internal rotation. And how they move on the court is the exact opposite of how I'm loading them in the weight room. So maybe I'm actually conflicting what they actually need. So I'm actually decreasing their ability to move to sacrifice so I can get them more load on an any given exercise. So that's where machines can allow you so many options from foot placement to range of motion. And then of course, you're not ever sacrificing load.

And so when we really look at these high-end athletes, they're wired and that's why they're here. Right. They, they might have some biomechanics things that we can clean up, but the reality is whatever they're doing that got them there, right? It's probably working pretty well. So then we just look at their local qualities. So in other words, sous outputs, leg extension or their knee quad, hamstring, adductor, AB deduction. And we look at those locally and we go, oh, where's the limiting. Where compared to normative data, where are they weak? And that's when we go, oh, we're gonna go chase that local tissue quality. We're gonna go chase that to make them whole.

Opposed to looking at all these global strategies that we think, oh, they're getting better because they're squatting. It's like, mm-hmm. But if the limiting factors or soleus output, or their ability, their lower leg strength, well then where do you think all that stress shielding is happening? It's gonna happen everywhere else in the hips and the quads. So that's where we can get pretty micro level with these guys. And that's where regressing these exercises is actually the best thing for higher performance. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah, I'm grateful, so grateful that plyometrics are like making this huge resurgence right now in sports, but in, in particular for younger athletes. But once we get into the level of, say, the NBA, for example, I would imagine, and I'm just guessing right now. Based on our conversation so far, that you would probably, because they do so much plyometric type work in the game. Right. You know, just again, just practically that you wouldn't necessarily do as much as far as your training construction for them doing a bunch of plyometric? Or are you doing the same amount or are you doing more? 

CORY SCHLESINGER: That's a great question. It's yes and no. And the reason why I say that is because. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: First of all, can you share what plyometric are?

CORY SCHLESINGER: Oh, absolutely. So ply, plyometric, excuse me, is think of your running, jumping change a direction. So our ability to hop, skip, jog, and then obviously putting those into more complex patterns with more magnitude, more variation. And then that's when we get into like. Truly like track, track and field, rather it's triple jump, high jump and sprinting. So plyometrics is the action of, I'm trying to create as much force as humanly possible with my body to get from point A to point B. Now, how do we actually facilitate that? That's to totally different like questions if you will.

So when I look at an athlete who does plyometrics all day, 'cause that is the sport I go, they do those kind of plyometrics. And so then we look at the space that they play in. So in a basketball court we have the court, so then you have five E five within that court. So how much plyometric are we really getting? We're getting a lot, but we're getting a lot of XL D cell. And then we look at practice and we go, okay, what are they getting out of this? So they got more space. So yeah, they're getting a lot of XL D cell, but then they're getting some more higher speed distance. The one thing they're they're not getting is truly foundational plyometrics from inkling. Toe bounds, straight legged, scissor bounding, cross-legged scissor, bounding.

Things that you see in a typical track and field setting where you're seeing from a warmup all the way to high end, top end sprinting. 'cause they play in such a small constraint. So because of that, we don't actually have good sprinters. We have good Excel, Excel athletes and good decel athletes. And of course we have our occasional really good vertical athletes. But if you test all the NBA athletes across the board, you would say not a, not all of 'em are great sprinters. And actually, I would argue that not all of 'em are great jumpers.

They're just really long and really fast, and it looks like they're jumping high. But not all of them are actually jumping as high as you think they are. So then when you look at sports, like obviously track and field, but like football, those are the guys that have crazy outputs that they're like five foot six, but they're jumping 38 inches. You don't see that too often in the NBA because it's just their size alone and then they play in a small space. Now when you look at soccer, that's a big field. You got a lot of opportunity to sprint. So they're actually faster than what you would see NBA athletes, but it's because of the nature of the sport.

So in training, so back to yes and no, no, in the fact of I can't beat up their joints more, but yes, and I gotta expose them to the things that are outside of basketball. So in other words, I want to get the top end sprinting. I want to get outside of 20 meters with these guys because they never get exposure to it. So if we're looking at the body holistically, now we're getting a lot more glu and ham development because they don't get that in the sport itself because they're doing so much XLD cell. That's why you don't hear too many people. Uh, or you hear knees and and ankles. You don't hear like your back. You don't hear hamstrings.

Now the interesting part is in NBA basketball, you're starting to see more and more hamstrings. You are, right? Yeah. But there's just talking to Steph Curry, there's a reason for that. In my opinion. There's more space and pace than there's been in the NBA and now these guys, because they have space and pace, they're creating these torso angles that they're leaning forward, but they're still running 16 miles an hour. So that's like top end sprinting. But they're just torso angles forward so they can get leverage to get around athletes. So that's where you're starting to see strain on the hamstring in a different way, which is why I think even more so getting outside and getting to longer distance sprint training in an early off season program. Start with tempos, then build out some hollow sprinting. These are things that I think athletes need more exposure to, 'cause they're not getting access to it due to the nature of the sport. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Mm, man. That's fascinating. I love that. I love that. It's, that's really zooming out because if I even think about the sprinting that's done in basketball and, and the sprints and seeing my son in practice, they do the lines right. They sprint from one end of the court and back and you know, they rest and they kind of repeat that, that format and being able to intentionally add in some longer sprints. So maybe we're talking about like a hundred meter sprints or 200 meter sprints. So this would be something to look at early off season? 

CORY SCHLESINGER: I think so. I think you build some tempos first. So like maybe like gassers, like what we used to do in football, right? So you'd be some from sideline to sideline, make it in a certain amount of time, but it allows you to get out in space. Right? And that's where you can introduce from a more intensive standpoint, like straight, like it's scissor, bounding, or I've actually seen this and I love is jump roping while sprinting. And I know that sounds wild, but you know, everybody does jump rope in place, right? But if you start going into locomotion. Well, you have to have a certain cadence and you have to have a certain locomotion to get your knee above your hip and your foot and cast it out just like you would see at top end sprinting.

So just working on that from a mechanical standpoint. You can do this at certain intensities and in certain tempos, but these are things that you can introduce into that early off season. Now, getting to true hundred meter sprinting. There's always risk, right? When we're talking about full out sprinting. So for me it's anything above 85, 80 5% of times that you find are good and then you can push that 85. That's what I feel really comfortable with because I will say this you, when you're dealing with a million dollar athletes and they pull a hamstring because we're out in the turf sprinting in the off season, you got some questions to answer. So there is a area where you don't flirt too or close to the sun, right? But. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: I love that. Shout out to Icarus. We got a icarus. 

CORY SCHLESINGER: There we go.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Analogy up in there. You know, you mentioned the straight leg scissor bounding, and it got me thinking about my track practices and like I always think of Dionne Sanders when I think of that movement, right?

CORY SCHLESINGER: Yes.

SHAWN STEVENSON: So can you describe a couple of like, so we've got bounding, we've got lateral movements, we've got the straight leg scissor like you just mentioned. So these are kind, I think these would be more attributed to like track athlete warmups. 

CORY SCHLESINGER: Yes, correct. I mean, for me, everything starts and ends with track and field in my opinion. If you are not stealing from track and field, you're gonna be 10 years behind. So the research is great. I'm really glad we have, you know, validation, but whatever track and field is doing now. That is what's gonna be researched 10 years from now. So when it comes to the throwing sports, obviously the sprinting sports and the jumping sports, I'm stealing all their warmups. Everything that they're doing, I am stealing because the rhythm and coordination one, and then you can always progress and regress that based off of your athletes. So we can add a band, say we're doing a skips, we can add a band and that's gonna give you more ground contact time. So that's gonna be more force into the ground.

But if I need more speed, then I can obviously do the opposite. I can have something pulling them towards me, and now it's less contact time. So now they're gonna have to narrowly go into overdrive and that's where you got cool technologies like 10 80 sprints or somebody like most peoples know about parachutes. But when you can actually scale it to that, to that kind of micro loads, that's when you can get some really cool adaptations. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: That's so awesome. Yeah, I just saw some training recently of being able to get basically creating a system to where the athlete is moving faster than they normally would and what that requires of the nervous system. And it kind of looked like you, you, you know, this scene in Civil War, not the Civil War, but like Captain America Civil War.

CORY SCHLESINGER: Yep.

SHAWN STEVENSON: With the Black Panther was chasing after Bucky.

CORY SCHLESINGER: Yep.

SHAWN STEVENSON: And Captain America. And they're like running the, it is kinda like at the airport when you got that, that little.

CORY SCHLESINGER: Oh the track.

SHAWN STEVENSON: That little track. And it just makes you go a little bit fast. It's kinda like the running on that. And I could see where, again, it's like training your body to go fast, you know? And so when you're going fast, like your normal speed, it's like your body's been there before. 

CORY SCHLESINGER: A hundred percent. And what's cool now is what you're seeing in track and field, they're actually making these like trailer shields that a car is towing while the athlete's running in it to create a draft, just like you see in nascar.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Wow.

CORY SCHLESINGER: To allow these athletes to run faster. And that's what the general, the limiting factor is, is being exposed to it. So an overspeed training is that technically what we're talking about, but from like a plyometric standpoint, that's also regression if you take it to vertical training. So in other words, if I take a resistance band, loop it over, a pull up bar, I tug down on it and now I'm doing jumps. Well that's now allow me to jump way higher, way faster than I could with my normal body weight. So this overspeed aspect is really good for deloading the body and allowing us to be faster. And so this is another example of where I say yes to doing plyometrics. And no to doing plyometrics with heavily plyometric based sports.

So that's where when we're doing learning or we want more con or less contact time, doing a reverse band jump is really powerful for guys that need tendon loading and then allowing them to actually learn how to dorsi flex and plantar, flex their foot. These guys live, I mean, live in ankle braces and taped ankles, so they lose the ability to dorsi flex and plantar flex really fast and rapid. So it's almost like my, my, my rule of thumb with whatever sport you're working with, you almost train the opposite of what they do in sport, literally the opposite end of the spectrum. And you're generally gonna help them from a health standpoint. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: This is so awesome. Alright, so we've got this spectrum, right? So we'll just say we're doing vertical jumps, right? We can create a load with that, you know, add in resistance. So maybe this is a weighted vest, maybe this is some kettlebells. So we've got that aspect. Then we've got your body weight. Then we've got all the way to like taking some of your, your weight outta the equation with a band. And can you describe that exercise? My son's sitting right over there because I think that would be a great. Input for him to do those banded jumps. 

CORY SCHLESINGER: For sure. So essentially you'll loop that band over the top. You'll choke it down to where you have some resistance. Now with a resistance band, the thing that's interesting is like how much does the band pull, right? So I would say like orange band, green band, whatever. If you pull it down and it lifts you off, it's probably too much band. So ideally you should feel like, yeah, I'm doing about to do a tricep extension exercise with this, so it wants to get me to about 10 to 20% less of my body weight for it to have a really good effect 'cause anything more than that, well then there's not enough load. But the cool thing that you can do is just build in higher and higher efforts to get you higher and higher. And then now we talk about underloading, the body. Well now we can go directly into and overloading the body is when you jump and you get high.

We'll let go of the band and now stick the landing. Hmm. And now we have an, an, uh, overloaded eccentric. And that's what you can also do with a depth drop, right? So you can get on ply boxes and jump down off of them. These are things that you can do to manipulate speed and load, and that's all we're doing. We're, we're finding strategic ways and different modalities that allow us to rather deload the body or load the body for any given stress and response that we're looking for the positive adaptation. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Awesome. Okay. Now, since I have you here, I wanna ask you about your opinion on, this is another thing that's getting a, a resurgence, but I'm seeing it more in sport, which is isometrics. So what are your thoughts on isometric exercise? And first, can you explain what that is?

CORY SCHLESINGER: For sure.

SHAWN STEVENSON: And if this is something that you see as emerging and valuable? 

CORY SCHLESINGER: Yeah. So we, we think about simplicity, and simplicity starts with the contraction types. So we have concentric, which it means going up on a bicep curl, and then we have eccentric, which we're going down on a bicep curl, and then there's the contraction where nothing's technically moving, technically, which is an isometric. Now that's just a layman's way of understanding the contraction types, but when we're doing isometrics, there's actually a lot of movement going on, but we still call it an isometric because no one's technically moving. But what's going on under the hood? There's a lot of strain and there's a lot of response.

So we've all done wall sits before. That's probably the easiest example, right? Get up on the wall, squat down knees at 90 degree, and you hold it for as long as you can. Your quads are burning. In that case, your muscle starts shaking. So there is contractions going on, and then it's pulling on the tendon. So when I think about isometrics, I think about it in two ways. Isometrics is probably one of the best ways to start string training. I think that is one of the best ways to develop strength with newbies. I think it's, it's easy. It's easy to apply, and it's easy to load, and it's a high success rate, and then you see it in advance, like power lifting.

They use isometrics all the time, especially overcoming isometrics to develop overall strength. One of the strongest stressors you could ever give the human body in a weight room scenario is a failed deadlift. A failed deadlift is an isometric, right? It's because you failed, you couldn't move it, but you created so much force that that's what you can do. Now with that being said, there's a ton of research around isometrics and there's tendon experts all over the place that are always arguing about truly what's happening with isometrics. Long story short, and from what I've gathered and what I use anecdotally with athletes is you have long duration isometrics, and then you have short duration isometrics, long duration isometrics is real.

Well, both are good for tenant health, but long duration isometrics is anywhere between 30 to a minute and a half long isometrics, whether you're doing a split squat, single leg squat, calf raises, whatever. But what happens with long duration ISOs is the theory is your muscles give out. So then now they're pulling on this tendon and now you're getting this, this lengthening of the tendon. The problem is when you're doing shorter activities, it generally bypasses the tendon and it goes more to the muscular or to the, to the muscle aspect. So for me, if I'm doing early stage rehab or I'm doing anesthesia effect to make someone have, make their patella tendon or their achilles tendon feel better, I do longer duration ISOs.

Now, when it comes to tendon loading to actually have adaptation, you need magnitude at some point, and that's where the high force isometrics or the short duration ISOs come in to where an overcoming isometric. I'm trying to push against something or pull against something and go as hard as I voluntarily can, and that's gonna give me tendon load as well. So it's not one or the other, it's both. So that's where I think isometrics, from a positional standpoint make a ton of sense for newbies. But now when we're talking about, Hey, how do you get better as a change of direction athlete or a basketball player or even a pitcher, you can actually get them in those sport like positions.

And create so much load to where they can actually feel my foot in this inverted sense with my hip and ir. And this has changed the direction. So now I'm getting this input into the body. And if I want to make change, once again, it's physics or physiology. Now physics means I'm not moving. Physiology means I'm putting load into the body. I am now learn learning from a motor learning standpoint that I can get in this position safely 'cause I'm loading it and now I've experienced it. Now when I add high velocity, it's something I've done before. So there's so many ways of using isometrics rather from tendon loading to early strength to motor learning that I think it's, to me, one of the most powerful things out there right now if a applied correctly.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Mm. Yeah. I just recently, what, what, what inspired that question was I saw a kid training recently. We'll just say he's an 18-year-old kid and he was dribbling, but he is like pushing up against a car. I don't know if you caught that video. 

CORY SCHLESINGER: I haven't caught that video, but I get the idea behind it. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. And of course the car has this little bit of give, you know, which again, I don't know whose car that was, but if you're thinking about the force that he's going up against in a, a standard human.

CORY SCHLESINGER: Right.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Right. It's just like it's incomparable to that car, that car, as far as his ability to move his weight against it. Right. And so would that be considered like an isometric type of exercise. 

CORY SCHLESINGER: That would be like, maybe you can put a cool term on it, like a functional isometric? 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yep. Yeah. Right. Yeah. 

CORY SCHLESINGER: But we use walls all the time for the exact same reason. We get them in their sport like positions. And then we have them apply as much force against a wall in an immovable object, which allows them from motor learning perspective, learn the position to be in, to have the proper foot pressure, the proper rotation of the hip or posture. And then from a load standpoint, whether you're doing it for long duration or a short duration, or doing it for tendon loading.

And so that's where you get so much bang for your buck with isometrics and you, you get strong without technicality. Like, look man, like I love the Olympic lifts. Early in my career, I thought it was one of the greatest things since sliced bread. But when it comes to the limiting factor of getting load into the body, the skill of the lift is that. And isometrics removes that. It allows me to teach, it allows them to load, and it allows me to have adaptations that I can move forward with. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Got a quick break coming up. We'll be right back.

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SHAWN STEVENSON: Are there any exercises, and I know this is tough, I've been, I've been asking you some pretty tough questions actually, but you just demolishing these things. Are there any exercises that you could say across the board? The majority of athletes should be doing.

CORY SCHLESINGER: Sprinting.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Sprinting. 

CORY SCHLESINGER: Sprinting is probably number one in my book, mainly because that is the most potent stimuli you can give to the human body. And then when you regress because of the ground reaction forces, the harder you sprint, the faster you sprint. You cannot recreate those forces in a weight room. You just cannot. The amount of force that you can put into a high speed sprint with one leg is six to eight times body weight. What exercise in the weight room am I doing that's equating to those forces? None. So when I think about what is going to make me quote unquote, a better athlete, sprinting and regressions or progressions to sprint training, so as the umbrella, definitely sprinting, then I guess I can go into isometrics.

So, and I hate to use like an like, an umbrella term instead of like a specific exercise, but I would say sprinting, isometrics, and then finding machines that allow me to overload locally and globally. And I know that's gonna be the exact opposite of what most people would say. Most people would say, oh, you need to progress these advanced exercises so that you can look like you're athletic in a weight room, when in reality they need to look athletic on the field. They need to look athletic in the constraints of their sport. And so this is where I'm hoping the advancement of strength and conditioning gets to is there is a skill acquisition piece that us practitioners, we understand how to teach skill and movement in a weight room. There is a progression to do that in sport because we understand the demands, the physiology and the physics that go into that.

So that's what I want to advance this career to if you ask me. I think strength and conditioning should not exist. And I know that sounds wild. But I think coaches really like strength and conditioning coaches. What's the difference between us and a sport coach? Learning general physical preparation. I think if a sport coach just learned general physical preparation, they're probably the most advanced person to work with any given athlete because they understand the full spectrum. And this is once again, goes back to track and field. What were track and field coaches back in the day? They were the weight coach, they were the nutrition coach, they were the technical coach, they were the whole thing 'cause they saw it from point A to point B or point Z, excuse me. So that's where you go.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Wow.

CORY SCHLESINGER: Like that is understanding the athlete in 3D. And then it goes back to the very first thing we talked about. There's the technical aspect of sport, there's the tactical aspect of sport and then there's the physical. And what's the best thing that coaches and athletes can do now, or the best thing they can do for their selves is learn how all of those interact with each other. And so you can get an optimal skill session, an optimal weight training session. And then of course an optimal practice, which hopefully leads to better games. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Amazing. Now what about, you mentioned deceleration in the context of basketball. There's a lot of that in, I mean, most sports I could think of, acceleration, deceleration. Are there any exercises that can help to facilitate, you know, teach our body deceleration? 

CORY SCHLESINGER: Absolutely. We'll just assume that we have a pain-free athlete when we're talking about this. So, I like depth drop landings a lot because that is D cell. It's just done in the vertical plane, which is the area that we could probably receive that highest stimuli the most. Then once we start introducing horizontal right, or linear, that's when it gets fun, right? Because that's where you see the difference between good and great athletes. Now, good athletes can stop, great athletes can stop faster. There's a big difference in that because you have your ludon, you have your Nicole Yos, you have James Harden's. Those guys decel better than anyone else on the planet. You don't see them necessarily excelling greater than some of your Anthony Edwards or whatever, but you see them decel Unbel and they create so much separation based off of that.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Right.

CORY SCHLESINGER: So there's so many things that go into that. There's joint mechanics, there's stiffness in tendon. There's so many layers that goes into decel training, which goes back to stimuli. So how do I regress that to progress it? I would say depth drop landings working in the vertical vector. Then you do that. Can you describe that? Oh yeah, sorry. Sorry about that. So you can get on a plyo box. That's something anywhere between 12 inches to 36 inches. You jump off of it and then you stick the landing. And so for me that's once again, like, you know, that reverse band thing we talked about earlier where you jump really high and then let go of the band and then stick the landing. That is an easier way to, how should I say this, standardize that. Now we can do with compliant landings or noncompliant landings.

So, or a stiff landing. So if I get on top of a, let's say a 12 inch box, and my goal is to land, most people will jump land and they absorb. So in other words, they bend their knees and then that's a more compliant landing. So that means I'm using my muscles to help me land that. But if I ask you to do the same thing, but don't let your knees bend. When you hit the ground, it's like a shock to the body that is a stiff landing. That is what D cell is all about. How stiff can I stop? And that's gonna be the difference between a good stopper or a great stopper. Who's a compliant stopper, which takes a lot of time, or a stiff stopper, which takes hardly any time 'cause they barely bend their knee to be able to push back. And that's where you see that step back.

That's where you see, you don't see guys bending their knees a lot on that when they're doing it. They got that foot so far outside their center of mass that their leg is stiff and then they bounce back like a pogo. And so that's what's really, really cool about what you can do with these depth drop landings. Once again, you get on top of a box, scale it from 12 inches to 36 inches, and then you work from a scale of compliant landings where I land, where I'm absorbing as much range of motion as I want, or to stiff landings where I'm trying to not have. Any give. And then you go from bilateral to unilateral and then now I can get out a little bit further and jump off of it laterally.

So now I'm, now I'm getting to the horizontal vector. But that's a great way to scale that decel stuff. And then of course, once you get to being more sport like that's when we can use that band that we were doing for overspeed training. Same idea. Instead of overspeeding you to run faster, I can overspeed you to decel, so I'm gonna help you excel, which is gonna give you a lot of speed. And then you gotta decel that. So these are ways that you can start progressing from the vertical vector to the horizontal vector. And that's where structure type comes in. And that's where there's only certain things you can train. Like I can train all these qualities and I will get better, but getting two standard deviations better is different.

And that's what makes the difference between. Good, great and elite. Mm. When you have elite, that's mom and dad, that's genetics. That's how the bones are structured. That's what makes them special and why they're able to do the things they do. When you watch Michael Jordan back in the day, stop, when you watch him move, he is so much lower than anyone else. Everyone else is moving almost like, like they got aboard as a spine, but he's moving in such a different way that people couldn't even comprehend. That's why he's getting travel calls and he wasn't really having that much success. But then as, as he progressed, he was just, he was, no one was moving like him because he had these shin angles.

And that's where we look at the now, the most extreme example of it, which is Kyrie Irving, that dude's shins are horizontal. When he stops, like his shins are so low to the ground, it's like my ankles at the ground. And that's what allows him to stop better than anyone else on the planet. And so that's, those are structure types that you just can't train. So once again, good, great. Sure you can train those, but elite, that's mom and dad. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. This is a valuable life skill because you never know when you're gonna need to stop. 

CORY SCHLESINGER: Oh man. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Agree more with that. You know what I mean? So this is important for all of us and we can build this in. I love it. Even this microdosing idea of like, you could just sprinkle in little bits of this in your training and being able to. Now when you, when you mentioned coming off of that box, you, you mentioned jumping. So are we jumping or are we stepping off of it? Or both? 

CORY SCHLESINGER: Both. I would say, once again, it's another like regression to progression where you just step off so you don't have your center of mass displaced too high, and then when you land, you land compliant or you land stiff. But if I don't have access to a higher box, well man, I'm already up 12 inches. 

Now I can jump up to 24 inches and then stick that landing. And now that we're on this topic to progress it even more now do a jump after that 'cause we're talking about landing now we're talking about plyometrics. So that's where we gotta get to, all right, I've absorbed all this energy, now I gotta re-release that energy so that I can go somewhere and that's where I can just jump in, place, jump over a hurdle.

So many things that you can do, and I think as aging athletes go through their journey. I think they need to get exploited to these intensive plyometrics. And that's where it's a yes and no 'cause yes, they do plyometrics in basketball, but they don't do the super intensive plyometrics that you could eventually work to in like track and field workouts or into real jump training programs. So that's where. You can micro dose that, and that's what we tend to do in season is the further along season we go, you start seeing us do a little bit more intensive plyometric work, low volume, but they need to hit that intensity because we get all this cool game data. I mean, I see everything that the guys do on the floor with XLD cell jumps, high speed distance.

Like I see the mileage that they do and the speeds that they do it at. So because of that, I know if they had a "light game or not", or if they're within these certain bandwidths. So then if they're not in those bandwidths, let's say we go through a 10 game spell and one of our athletes is not getting enough outputs that we know they're going to see in play off basketball. What a great opportunity to microdose some intensive plyometrics. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: So smart man. So smart. What about, I saw a movement, that I have not yet. I felt like a kinship with the movement. Okay. That I've not yet done until I, you know, I wanted to talk to you about it today. Because of course, as I was doing my research and just knowing Insima and Mark, it was like some kind of a drop lunge 

CORY SCHLESINGER: Yeah.

SHAWN STEVENSON: That they learned from you as well.  

CORY SCHLESINGER: That the kettlebell drop lunge. 

So just to explain to the audience, real simple. We all do split squats, right? Slow up and down with a kettlebell drop lunch or dumbbell, whatever you have access to. It's the same idea. The only difference is I'm trying to fall as fast as humanly possible and then stick the landing. And so with this now we have a very high velo, eccentric. We think about eccentrics, we think about really slow because we're trying to wear out that muscle, right for hypertrophy. But from a magnitude standpoint, if we add velocity, man, we get a lot of eccentric load. We're just doing it really, really fast.

So I can actually technically get more load on an individual from a magnitude standpoint than I could with a 400 pound squat. Because they're falling so fast and they have to abruptly stop. So this kettlebell drop lung, you take your opposite arm, opposite leg, you drop down, you pop back up, and then you can switch hands. You can keep it stationary. Where it really came from was this wild stuff I was experimenting with in Stanford. I was actually throwing kettlebells with a friend. We would throw kettlebells back and forth to each other and think of like a kettlebell swing. But at first it was like, okay, this is just meatheads, like just trying to find something new.

They're so bored. But we got up to the point where we're throwing a 206 pound kettlebell back and forth to each other, and then me and a friend who's also in the league, he, we threw it 126 times consistently without a break. But what we found with this is it was so much eccentric load that I'm like, do I actually need heavy weight when I can just throw. And like these high velo, eccentric, 'cause it's given me so much low to my tissue that I'm like, from a magnitude standpoint, I'm actually getting that and I'm not getting the crazy dawns that I would get from these slow or resistance. So there was an aspect to that I really appreciated. But then where the kettlebell, where it evolved to a kettlebell drop lung, I didn't have a partner guy wasn't there one day.

So I was like, you know, I'm gonna throw to myself. And then I was doing it bilaterally and then I'm like, oh, I can get kind of saucy with this. Like, all right, opposite arm, opposite leg. All right, let's throw it a little higher. Catch it. Let's get a little heavier. And it all really stemmed from, I tore my Achilles. So when I tore my Achilles, I'm like, how do I get plyometrics without jumping? And that's where it all, that's to put a bow on it, where it all really originated from was, this is high velo EC without getting off the ground. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Oh wow. This, I love this because. Just play. You were basically playing.

CORY SCHLESINGER: Yes.

SHAWN STEVENSON: And you uncovered something that is extremely valuable. And with this drop lunge, so basically we are, we're standing straight and then we're kind of dropping into like a split squat. 

CORY SCHLESINGER: Drop into a split squat, and.

SHAWN STEVENSON: With the weight in your hand?

CORY SCHLESINGER: With the weight in your hand, right. And then there, there is a skill component to this, right? So we can scale it to where we start stationary, let's have it in our right hand, and then we drop and split with our left leg in front. Cool. Stick the landing. But then there's a fluidity, like there is this rhythm, it's almost like a dance where once I get outta the bottom, I pop up and then I need to switch hands switch. So now it's gotta float in the air. And now I have to time it. So it's like athletic lifting, which is what we see in Olympic lifting.

But this is a way scalable version that people pick up immediately if they have a little bit of athletic qualities to them. And I actually done it, especially from Stanford to a little bit in Phoenix where I was doing it with the team at once. But we're doing partner passing and kettlebell drop lunges because it was that easy to scale. And so that's where, it's not the complexity of Olympic lifting, but you get the magnitude of the catches as if you were doing Olympic lifting. But then it's a little bit more, and I hate to use the word functional, but a little bit more athletic when I can do it in a split stance, when I can do it in locomotion opposed to the, you know, the catch on a clean, where it's obviously bilateral.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Amazing. I could see the translation with basketball easily here as well.

CORY SCHLESINGER: For sure. I mean, you can work directly in the frontal plane where you're doing a drop lunge, or you can start spanning out your drop lung to more of a 45 degree angle. Mm. Next thing you know, it just looks like you're kind of crossing, right? But that's that compliant landing we were talking about, like there's compliance to that de cell and there's stiffness to that D cell. And when they do stiffness all the time on the court, once again, going back to what we talked about before, there's the other end of the spectrum where I gotta give them what they don't get, which is those compliant D cells, which is really, really good for tendon health.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Amazing. What I wanna do next, since I've got you here and I've got a young son. Yeah. I've got a couple young sons, but my 13-year-old son here. And right now, you know, there's, there's a trend that's taken place and I'd say maybe the last decade or so where specialization has happened with our kids. And they've been, and again, it's well intentioned to get like, get extra training with this particular sport. Right. So skilled training, you know, and just kind of specializing. So maybe they're playing basketball year round and now I'm seeing a lot of really superior athletes speaking out against that.

Like, you know, of course LeBron has been vocal about and just like playing other sports. Michael Jordan famously, you know, Kobe asked him, what were you doing at, what kind of skills were you working on with basketball when you were 12? And Michael Jordan replied to him, I was playing baseball, right. And so what do you think about specialization versus diversification in the different types of sports that kids are doing?

CORY SCHLESINGER: Yeah, I think, I mean, we have an epidemic in sport related injuries, right? And we have more technology AC access than we've ever had in the human history, right? So we understand tendons, we understand muscles, we understand joints, we, we see it all. We have so much data. But the one thing that we don't really have an answer for is movement literacy and how that happens in the ecosystem in their early development. And the best athletes you'll ever see are the ones that are multiple sport athletes. Deion Sanders already talked about him before. Bo Jackson, like some of these guys, they were the best athletes in the world. They just so happened because they were such good athletes that they could develop the skill in multiple sports.

That's where there's a difference, because I don't necessarily see the greatest athletes in the NBA. I see great specialization, or I see great skills, right? I don't think I, we would all stand up and say, Nicole Yoic is the best. Athlete you've ever seen. Right? But he has an unbelievable skill set and he has unbelievable size. But when I think about what is demanded and what is expected is, well, now we got EAU circuits and we have all this stuff surrounded around athletes trying to develop so they can be the best basketball player. The problem is, it's like CrossFit. CrossFit is not the best in the world. It's survivalists.

And I think the same in AAU basketball. It's just they, they, they survived and they overcame in spite of the system. And that's the part that I'm like, you're churning out so many athletes that are just never gonna hit potential because they're just so man mangled that I think multi-sport athletes is really, is really what you want to be so that you have more of a bandwidth to accept whatever loads are coming down the pipeline. And I think the later you can go, the better. Now I spent a brief period of time at the Olympic Training Center early in my career, and they had this great survey that went out to all the athletes. And one of the questions was, how many sports did you play up until the age of 18?

And the average answer was six. And I'm like, these are the most specialized athletes in the world. Like we're talking about team sports, right? Olympic sports, it's the javelin, it's the shot put, it's whatever. But these are the most specialized athletes in the world, and they played on average four sports. So you could say probably 6, 7, 8, that they probably at least attuned to at some point. So then I, I start questioning like, what is athleticism? Well, it's the ability to do multiple things above a standard deviation than everybody else. So I look at decathlon athletes, I go, that used to be celebrated as the best athlete in the world. Now it's just the a hundred meter sprinter. But when I think about the development of my childhood development of your young child, I think, man, the more things they can do, the better. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. That's awesome. Thank you for that input, man. Again, a little bit selfishly, but also for a lot of parents out there. Going into, again, we got a couple practices each week. Right. And I want to fit in some training for him. Right. Some strength and conditioning. And my older son actually works with a team as a strength and conditioning coach. 

CORY SCHLESINGER: That's awesome. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Right. And you know, he's always learning as well, and he's just trying to get these inputs into these kids. And again, we're, we're dealing with conditions where we're not necessarily in a weight room.

CORY SCHLESINGER: Right.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Right. And so he is just making do with what he has available, which is skills in the body. What would be ideal for these kids? You know, like, we'll just say high school athletes and they've got, we'll just say, you know. Three to five practices a week, where would they fit in those strength and conditioning inputs? And then, so that's question one.

CORY SCHLESINGER: Yeah.

SHAWN STEVENSON: And then what about that AAU weekend where they've got four basketball games? Like what is the ideal, maybe again, warmup inputs and then post-game. 

CORY SCHLESINGER: Yeah, we all used to joke about the warmup. Like I remember as an athlete, I'm like, oh, the warmup. And then you're just kind of just getting through it. I think, and this is what I did at Stanford, and that's was the birth of microdosing was, Hey, instead of like me doing that BS warmup and the guys are not into it, and I'm obviously not into it either, why don't you just gimme 10 minutes more and let's just turn it into a lift. So that was actually the birth of microdosing was, it's just a strength warmup.

So I think. Something that you can easily do is just build it into the beginning of practice and you need to glorify warmups. Warmups isn't the thing that we do before the first drill of practice. Now warmups is your opportunity to individually get better, and that's where we can go into potentiation. That's where we get into medicine ball throws. Like if, especially the age group that you're working with, medicine ball throws is still one of the best ways you can develop speed and power, in my opinion, because you can do it in such a multitude of ways and every single track and field, expert, coach, drink, coach, whatever, still utilizing to this day.

So that's one of the things that it's like, it's a staple. It's always going to work, but then you can get into isometrics, right? These are things that can actually make the body feel really, really good before you actually go out to the, to the pitch or to the field or to the court, and then post, of course, that's where you go. Alright, I'm gonna pick one to two exercises. Let's say, especially if you're young pushups, pullups. Great place to start. How now? Okay, I've executed pushups, pullups, great. I can add a little bit of weight to it, or I can tempo it, or I can eventually work to one arm pushups to assisted, one arm pullups, like I think calisthenics.

There's so much to get outta calisthenics that we're not tapping into. And then we add resistance training, and I'm like, nah, get calisthenics first and then add a little bit of resistance or complexity to the calisthenics. Then let's get into heavy lifting, right? So goblet squats or R DLS rows, whatever we want to do. So I think that's how you can do it, is do it pre-practice where you're really, hey, the warmup is real. Like the warmup is a session. It is not just the thing. And then post, Hey, pick one to two exercises and whatever's left in the tank, we're gonna exhaust it. And you can do that three to four times a week.

So if you're practicing five times a week, maybe you sprinkle it in the beginning, maybe you sprinkle it towards the end of the week, but whatever is the furthest away from competition. Probably start there. And then now the AAU weakens, I don't think there's anything you can do for that. Like it's two to three games per day for two to three days, and you're just like, oh wow. Like this is, this is the stimuli. Now, if I was in that situation with the knowledge that I have now, I would front end all my strength work at the beginning of the week, allow a dip so that I could recover. And then once I get to those games, we can do some potentiation. But that's about it. Like that, it's, that is the stressor. And so how do I get myself ready for those multiple stressors and just a little bit of potentiation, maybe some ISOs to make my knees feel good. And then we're rolling. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Man. We're on the same page. That's amazing. Thank you so much for sharing that. Great insights. And I want to ask you about this because something really remarkable happened. Just, maybe it was a couple months ago now kind of time has flown by. But as I mentioned, you know, my son's 13 and after practice, again, about maybe a month or two ago, he surprised him. He grabbed the rim and he surprised himself. It was after practice and he had never, and I happened to be right there and the only one looking at him, he looked right at me.

He's like, dad, did you see that? Can you explain like how something like that can happen? I was sharing with him the first time I grabbed the rim, the same thing, like some, this really invigorating experience had just happened. You know, I just did a bunch of training. It was actually, it was, it was a dance performance thing at school, and then I just went and I just, I hit this thing that's a 10 foot high light at the school, and then I was like, holy shit. I hit this and I went to the gym and I grabbed the rim. And it's just like I was in this heightened state. I had just finished practicing and training and you know, I was just able to to, is there something to that. 

CORY SCHLESINGER: Dude there's this guy, his name is Joel Smith. I think he's one of the most brilliant people in all of sports performance. He has this podcast called Just Fly Sports Performance. And what he does is he asks people all the time that exact question, when's the first time you grabbed Brim? And every single time it's after practice. And the theory to me is there's an efficiency piece to being able to create that kind of force. And so it's not necessarily just raw strength. When you see raw strength, then you see like the football guys who go up and grab rim, which is the most hilarious thing 'cause they, I mean, asked a grasp to get the range of motion to use the muscular force to go up and there's just no synchronization at all.

It's just raw power. Then you watch like a cheetah and a, you know, a tiger leap and you're like, oh, that's fluidity. But I think the same thing. Once we exhaust some of our resources, we kick in efficiency. And how do I move and synchronize and make this the most perfect output given the circumstances that I'm in? So whenever you find fatigue, you also find efficiency. Now, obviously there's a quick tipping scale, obviously, but I've generally seen the exact same response after a practice after pickup. That's when everybody got their first dunk. And to me, the only logical response is efficiency. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: It makes sense again, like again, that magical moment when it happened. He wasn't necessarily trying to do it. He just jumping up like maybe to touch the net like he's done a thousand times and he grabbed the rim like, and he, I heard it pulled down a little bit. He surprised himself, right? And it was so casual. How it happened. And, and, and I love that analogy of like looking at a ba you know, a football player who's like using everything they got to, they could do this thing, but he didn't even really try to do it and surprise himself. 

CORY SCHLESINGER: A hundred percent. And that's where, you know, you get lathered up, you go through all these different activities. I think there's also a neck up aspect of having all these different stimuli. That all of a sudden the simple task of jumping it is like, oh, this is all I gotta do. One, two step, go up and then bang. You get your first dunk.

SHAWN STEVENSON: That's amazing. That's amazing. Alright man, I just want to, I've talked to you forever man. This is awesome. I want to ask you for every day people, you know. Just everybody who's, who's listening, you know, there are athletes in the audience, there are people who've got kids who are athletes, but we all wanna be our best selves. And you know, that formula is gonna be different from time to time where we are in our life cycle or life conditions. But are there anything, are there, are there, are there certain exercises or mindset pieces that you would encourage all of us to implement on a consistent basis? You know, you've reiterated the, the point of sprinting several times. I think that's immensely, immensely valuable. And there's so many different ways we can go about sprinting, by the way. It doesn't have to be on a track or whatever the case might be, which is, it doesn't really get better than that.

CORY SCHLESINGER: Correct.

SHAWN STEVENSON: But you know, just being able to get that anabolic input. You know, whether this is like a stationary bike, whatever the case might be, swimming, there are different ways to get that kind of anabolic, high intensity input. But are there any other exercises again, or insights for all of us to take on on a regular basis. 

CORY SCHLESINGER: When I think about longevity, I do a lot of research on longevity because to me, that's just the, it's the end goal for all of us anyways. But there's a high performance aspect to that. So when I think about longevity, I think about, okay, you probably have to have full range of motion and most activities that you do. And when I think about people getting older, I go, well, they get limited range of motion, right? All of a sudden it's hard to sit down on that couch, or you hear the grunts getting outta the car.

So you're like, okay, check. That's limited. Then you go the next, which is strength. So then all of a sudden you see grip strength being limited, right? I used to do the things like this. I used to carry this over there, and now that's, that's a little bit harder. So it's like, okay, so now I got range of motion and I got grip strength. And then the reason why I keep going back to speed is, yeah, I used to sprint, but then just one day I just stopped sprinting. And then 20 years later they're like, yeah, I haven't, I haven't sprinted, sprinted. When's the LA jumped? When's the last time I'd done any of those activities? So when I think about.

You can go about fiber typing and all these other things that go with the decaying of a human being. Well, how do I prolong that decay and sprinting. It's probably a good one, right? Because now that's speed. Grip strength, picking up heavy, probably another good one. So like a two arm hang is probably one of my favorite tests to see. Do you have good relative strength and how long can you hold a two arm hang? Most human beings, in my opinion, should be able to hang off of a pull up bar with one arm for 45 seconds. I think that's a pretty good standard for most humans to be able to do. Most humans cannot even come close to that. And I go, well, that from an overhead strength standpoint and a relative being able to handle my own body weight, that makes sense.

And then from a mobility standpoint, or a range of motion, put your butt on the ground and can you get up off the ground without using your hands. Yeah. And most people cannot do that. Most people have to put a hand down, they have to put the second hand down, they have to use their need to do this. And then I go, those are the three things that I'm constantly trying to ev to delay as long as I possibly can. And I think about my mother and I think about all my older family members and friends, and I think these are the things they cannot do. And one of the greatest strength coaches of all time, his name's Al Ver Mill, he was the bull strength coach during the Jordan era. Right. Now, Tim Grover was training Jordan, but somebody had to be training all those other dudes.

And Al Ver Mill is world renowned, like he's on my Mount Rushmore of strength coaches. And that dude was still sprinting probably five years ago, and he's like 86 now, something like that. And he was still sprinting every day. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Amazing. 

CORY SCHLESINGER: Because he's like, that's the last thing to go. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. 

CORY SCHLESINGER: So if I'm losing my ability to sprint, I'm probably frail. I was like, that makes a lot of sense. From a bone density standpoint, from a tendon and tendon health standpoint, whew. The longer we can do fast things, the better. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Amazing. Absolutely amazing. And a lot of times, especially in our culture today, it isn't a matter of our time was up, it was a matter of us just stopping doing the thing.

CORY SCHLESINGER: Bingo. And that's where the beauty of microdosing, everybody can just dose some of that stuff off in their morning routine. You can start off with, soon as you get out of the bed with no handed get ups, you can walk after you get outta the shower, you can go to that pull up bar that's hanging above your closet and hang for as long as you possibly can. Now where you sprint. I'll let you figure that one out. But everything else, it's kind of manageable. You can dose it out into your morning routine, into your evening routine, or to when you're playing with your kids. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. Awesome man. Well, this has been amazing. Again, I've got a thousand more questions I could ask you about and it's incredibly insightful and you know, I shared this before the show, but just, I mean, the probability, you know, you working with the Suns and them going to the finals, you know, and then you going to Detroit and them making this run that they made this past year outta nowhere. What's the consistency there? It's you. 

CORY SCHLESINGER: Man. I would love to take full credit for that and if any, if my president is listening to this. Sure. But the reality is I've been very fortunate to be around a lot of high character, high quality people, and the stars just came in alignment and I'm just very lucky to be a part of two spots that made that happen.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. Well, I appreciate you so much. Is there anywhere where people can like, get more information from you, learn some of these insights, be able to see, because again, we described a lot of things, but you share some visual representations of a lot of the things that you talk about, uh, you know, with social media. So where can people follow you and get more information? 

CORY SCHLESINGER: Yeah, I'm solely on Instagram Schles strength S-C-H-L-E-S strength. And then, I have a website where I sell courses, so it's not done yet. NDY.com. But yeah, those are two places you can find me.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Awesome. Not done yet. What does that mean for you?

CORY SCHLESINGER: Oh, man. It's, it's just never satisfied. And the evolution of what I thought I was to what I'm going to be Still not done yet. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: My man, the one and only Cory Schlesinger, everybody. Thank you so much for tuning into this episode today. I hope that you got a lot of value out of this. Share this with any athletes that you know, any friends with kids that are athletes. This information needs to get into more hands and more hearts. We need to know, yes, where the puck is, but where's the puck going to be? And that's what you get with somebody like Cory Schlesinger. You get to know what is coming next. Where is sport and training progressing to, and also what are some of these things that we can implement in our own lives so that we can experience a level of longevity.

As he mentioned, we've got people playing in the NBA right now who've been playing over 20 seasons. Like at extremely high levels like we've never seen before, and this is not an accident. This has to do with training. This has to do with nutrition. This has to do with recovery. 

We can do more and be more with these amazing bodies that we have, but we've gotta implement some smarter training strategies. What would be amazing is if you would take a screenshot of this episode and share it on Instagram. Cory shared that he's exclusively on Instagram. Tag him. Let him know what you thought about this episode. Share the love. I'm sure it would do his heart. So much. Good to see that you are listening today.

We've got some amazing masterclasses and world class guests coming your way very, very soon. So make sure to stay tuned. Take care, have an amazing day, and I'll talk with you soon. And for more after the show, make sure to head over to the model health show.com. That's where you can find all of the show notes. You can find transcriptions videos for each episode. And if you've got a comment, you can leave me a comment there as well. And please make sure to head over to iTunes and leave us a rating to let everybody know that the show is awesome and I appreciate that so much and take care, I promise, to keep giving you more powerful, empowering, great content to help you transform your life. Thanks for tuning in.