A Review of Christian Thibaudeau’s Neurological and Physical Typing Certification Course

As long as I’ve been a coach, I’ve realized the greatest distinction of experts in the field is their ability to individualize training to the athlete. Some coaches will have a gem here or there while many athletes flounder under their care. The best coaches will not only bring out elites, but also raise the performance of more “marginal” athletes significantly. The ability to do this requires the ability to individualize programming.

To this end, there is nothing better on the market in terms of understanding individualization than Christian Thibaudeau’s Neurotyping system and corresponding certification course.

I first heard of Neurotyping on the “All Things Strength and Wellness” podcast hosted by Robbie Bourke, and it was honestly one of the most mind-blowing experienced I’d had regarding training in the last 10 years. I found myself constantly re-winding and re-listening to Christian’s description of each Neurotype, and making connections to my own training and that of others.

I’ve always been fascinated by the link between personality and athletic performance. I remember reading on a forum when in college of a male high jumper wanting to marry another high jumper, and asking for advice. He was advised to marry a distance runner instead, as they were generally much more easy-going (I don’t know if I agree with the relationship advice, but I did find it interesting). I’ve come to realize that explosive personalities often accompany explosive athletes, and I’ve even noticed lower neural conduction rates of endurance athletes and slow movers versus athletes who have the capacity to move violently.

All this work drove me to read books like “The Edge Effect“, where I tested all athletes but something seemed to still be missing, as I had a hard time identifying some athletes, let alone what their best training splits and movements might be. When I came across Christian Thibaudeau’s system, this all changed, and everything started to fall into place. I listened to all of his podcasts on the topic and even did my own episode with him, as well as reading all his blog posts in the area. This helped immensely, but things came full circle when I took his certification course.

The first few videos of the course were some things I’d learned through the podcasts, but with many more details. The second half of the course hit a completely new gear in terms of not only assessing Neurotype based off of personality traits (something you can learn to do within minutes of meeting someone when honed properly), but the information on building training programs around those types was completely on another level, and gave me enough “ammunition” in my training arsenal to develop training programs for nearly any sport and Neurotype for years to come. The training library and reference guides are worth their weight in gold for any coach looking to have a concise roadmap to optimal athletic performance.

Throughout the whole course and neurotype experience, there are 5 aspects of my coaching and professional development that have changed for the better:

I learned to better understand, and program for those athletes not in my own neurotype realm
I learned more training options and ideas for those athletes near my own neurotype (twitch reps)
I have better understanding of how neurotype impacts the layout of training cycles
I learned how to read personalities better to aquire neurotype, which helps even in the professional realm
I began to understand the role of the types in team dynamics and leadership

Better Understanding of Athletes not in my Neurotype

One of the most important, and difficult, things in coaching is to understand how to train athletes who are not like yourself. It takes first a level of personal curiosity and awareness to realize that many athletes will not respond to the type of training that worked best for you. Once you get here, some significant difficulty still lies ahead, as actually programming for these athletes comes outside of the feeling intuition that comes from our own training (which for me as a 1B type is particularly powerful).

Through Christian Thibaudeau’s Neurological and Physical Typing Certification Course, I gained powerful tools in helping athletes who were on the other end of the neural spectrum as myself. This originally manifested itself in adjusting the training group of several swimmers to a bracket of lower neural demand based on what I was able to determine about them through personality typing that went beyond their event group.

I got great feedback from the swimmers and coaches on the switch, and the swimmers I switched over from work in previous years of a much higher demand went on to have outstanding seasons. I won’t claim myself as they key to their success, as their water work is #1, but I can say that the work I was programming did help facilitate greater output without harming their ability to adapt in the water. I also had the same result on a few freshmen swimmers whom I normally would have thought to be a type 2, who I discovered were a type 3 through personality observation and trained them accordingly. Learning how to optimize the program of a type 3 also proves critical in working with swimmers, as many in this category gravitate towards the sport.

I also found great results in the strength realm in working with water polo players, particularly as I have had a strangely large number of 2B athletes on the team in the past couple of years. Even before the I learned of Neurotyping, I found that 1×20 (a high-rep, CNS sparing program) worked better for this group than classical Triphasic Training (an effective neural-based program), which I attributed to many athletes simply not having a strong nervous system, but since then realized that how to address this group runs much deeper.

Using some of the sample work from the Neurotyping course helped me to create programming that generally ran outside my own intuition to help athletes to reach their highest strength levels, some of them by far (i.e. 40lb trap bar deadlift and 15lb bench press PR for an already experienced senior athlete in 4 months training time), compared to past years featuring programming that was more neurally-driven for that population.

More Training Options and Ideas for Those Athletes in my Neurotype Realm (and some validation for things that have worked in the past).

Hindsight is always 20/20, but it has become clearer knowing exactly why a particular program I ran with an athlete in a time period of success might have worked well. After going through the Neurotyping system, I’ve had more tools to reflect on an athlete’s result of their season, as well as how they managed the peaking process. The personality identification from the course has helped me to be more certain of how training may have worked (or didn’t work) for particular types, as I wouldn’t have been able to know exactly who was what prior. Since training has many parts and variables to it, the more we can know about how various Neurotypes tend to respond to training, the better our hindsight can be.

I also have been able to dissect much of my own training in the past, knowing why training like a powerlifter destroys my ability to sprint and jump, and training like a track jumper boosts my strength to bodyweight ratio like none other. I also realized how my break-dancing stint in high school led to the best tricep development of my life, when standard barbell work wouldn’t deliver me the same gains.

Within this, I’ve also even found the fun amateur project of knowing which “favorite” jump training programs are based off of particular Neurotypes. For example, Jump Manual is a 2A based program and Air Alert is a 2B/3 oriented program. Vertical Ignition is very much a 1B/2A program, as many would expect since I wrote it!

Better Understanding of how an Athlete’s Neurotype Impacts Building their Training Cycles

In addition to a more optimal exercise selection, I’ve also found how one’s Neurotype will push me to create a better training cycle in terms of their loading and unloading schemes. Part of the fun of learning about how brain chemistry impacts adaptation is seeing multiple worlds come together, such as the work of Anatoliy Bondarchuk and how he saw the adaptation rates and patterns of athletes within the throwing events, when doing the same workout every day (or perhaps alternating 2 workouts). Some athletes adapt very fast, while others tend to take longer. Knowing how an athlete’s personality fits into this equation can help coaches have a jump-start on knowing how early test cycles might develop in order to better optimize training around a peak.

Better Reading of Personalities in Concern to Neurotype

One of the biggest things I was wondering before starting the Neurotyping course was how to accurately gauge an athlete’s type, without having to take the time to watch them train and see what they respond best to. Before even taking the course, I had a big interest in personality and body language, reading books like “The Language of the Body” by Alexander Lowen and “What Every Body is Saying” by Joe Navarro. I’m not a naturally great reader of people, so having a reference point from the work of others has proven critical to my understanding. Learning through the Neurotype course has taken this to another level entirely, and knowing the types of not just athletes, but everyone else in life brings a better level of understanding on how to have good success in both training and relationships.

Better Understanding of how Neurotype Plays Into Leadership Roles and Team Dynamics

One of the factors that I didn’t expect in going through the course was gleaning information on how Neurotypes play into team dynamics. I’m starting to realize that any team must not only have great leadership, but great leadership from athletes who are type 1A or 1B. If there are too many type 2’s, it is difficult for the team to find direction within itself. If the type 1’s are not good leaders, then it doesn’t seem to matter so much how good, or well-intentioned the type 2’s are in many cases. Knowing how each Neurotype acts as a member of the team is also useful as is knowing how to train them, and which athletes to particularly emphasize in terms of leadership

Summary

If you are on a quest to be the best coach you can be for your athletes, then the Neurological and Physical Typing Certification Course is a must in your educational process. I can’t recommend this course enough, and I see the work of coach Thibaudeau becoming a baseline for future coaching, training and fitness.

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