Today’s episode features Christian Thibaudeau who is back for his third appearance on the podcast.
Christian is a world-renowned expert in strength training, but has gained recent attention particularly for his neurotyping system (read my review of it here), which trains athletes in accordance with their neurotransmitter levels and sensitivities. His original podcast with me on the topic is an important listen (if you haven’t listened to it already you should do that before you dive into this episode) and is also our most popular episode to date. The neurotyping system is a true game changer, and Christian followed up his original talk with episode #99 which went in depth into competitive aspects of each neurotype, and how to approach competitive “chokers” from a neurotyping perspective.
Today’s episode is a two-headed monster of awesomeness when it comes to developing athletes. The first half of this show, Christian goes in depth regarding early childhood (even down to the 0-2 year old range) and what experiences a child needs to have to optimize their chances of being a good athlete later on. Christian also gives his take on the over-coached, over-speciailized epidemic that is plaguing youth sports today.
The second half of the show goes deep into specifically training the 2B and type 3 neurotypes (think those athletes with a “weaker” nervous system), and how to properly approach them from a speed, power and sport skill perspective. Training athletes in the 1B and 2A categories, and even 1A are pretty straightforward, as modern power development methods such as French Contrast will easily improve abilities here. Athletes with less dopamine sensitivity have different needs, and there are other strategies that can prove useful here.
Finally, Christian gives some insight on nutrition and neurotyping, as well as thoughts on training frequency.
If you are interested in your own personal neurotype, there is a questionnaire for this now available on Thib Army.
Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster, supplier of high-end athletic development tools, such as the Freelap timing system, kBox, Sprint 1080, and more.
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Key Points
- Child athletic development, particularly from ages 0-2 and how neurology and neurotransmitters fit into this equation
- Why great natural talent is often labeled as “uncoachable”
- Recent developments in neurotyping, including training for the type 2B
- “French Contrast replacements” for athletes who are not 1B and 2A Neurotypes
- How to use the weightroom to improve sensory feedback in athletes for sport skill
- How to train a team sport 2B in the weightroom who needs to gain speed
- The effects of proteins and carbohydrates in different neurotypes prior to and after workouts
- Ideas on training frequency in bodybuilding versus athletic performance
Christian Thibaudeau Quotes
“Modern parents castrate their child’s chance of being a great athlete before the first year of life is over”
“The foundation (of athleticism) is built in the first two years of life”
“(Child athletic development from age 0-2) depends on two main things, and the first one is movement skills… that depends on the visual system, the vestibular system and the proprioceptive system, your hands and your feet. The hardware for this system is laid out in the first 2 years of life.”
“The kid needs to see many different shapes, many different colors… three dimensional stuff”
“The vestibular system is where most kids are lacking because parents are lazy… it is developed when a kid has to adapt to rapidly changing positions in space”
“The hands and feet are the two main sensors when it comes to being in a relationshiop with an opponent or in space, so you need to touch as many different textures and shapes as possible, the feet need to be in contact with the floor as much as possible”
“The second (factor to young athletic development) is creativity, and that is what separates the truly great athletes from the good physical specimen that lacks that genius athletic potential”
“The first element (of creativity) is a large accumulation of experience”
“People with high Acetylcholine are “naturally more skilled or gifted””
“The second element (of creativity) is a visceral need to experience everything”
“The last element (of creativity) is a willingness to experiment and take risks… creativity cannot be taught, you cannot coach it”
“Many coaches overcoach young kids because of their own need to feel like they are the next Bellichek. Coaches undervalue creativity and they want to emphasize their ability to teach skills in the system”
“The best of the best (athletes) had a lot more non-structured play during their childhood”
“Any modern screen, it projects images using blue light. Blue light is very stimulatory on the dopaminergic receptors… it produces a huge pleasure sensation, that’s why these iphones are so addictive. When you put a kid in front of a flat-screen TV that emits blue light, it produces a stimulus to the dopaminergic receptors that is excessive”
“A type 2B’s characteristic is low GABA… with low GABA comes one thing, excessive glutamate. Glutamate is what is used to produce GABA… type 2B’s suck at converting glutamate into GABA”
“You see more 2B’s in North American and European Society… our foods are full of glutamate!… if you overdo the glutamate thing, you move over towards the 2B scale”
“The keto diet, some people will do it and suddenly feel like a new person… it’s those people who become the preachers. These people were 2B’s, people who had too much glutamate”
“Tyrosine is used to produce dopamine, tryptophan… serotonin”
“(In French Contrast style/Contrast style training) For type 2B and 3, you want the least technical difficulty, or at least something they are doing in their sport”
“For 1B, you don’t even have to have sport specific exercises to get them to transfer… when you have more acetylcholine, you can retrieve stored information easier, but more important, you can transfer that information to other parts of the brain faster, so they can come up with a new solution and easily transfer motor skill”
“The purpose of pre-fatigue is not to much to build muscle, but rather to improve the mind-muscle connection with the key muscle in the exercise”
“From a strength transfer point of view, if you combine a lifting exercise with a sport exercise, if you have people who have low skill transfer, that will help people transfer gains from the weightroom to sport performance a lot better”
“If your muscles are so strong and you are naturally explosive, your body can protect itself by decelerating sooner into the movement”
“When you eat more carbs, you favor the absorption of tryptophan over tyrosine so you increase serotonin more”
“If you give glycine to a type 2B it will decease his recovery”
“You need to fix serotonin before fixing GABA”
“If there is one supplement from a neurotype perspective that any athlete can regenerate from, it would be lion’s mane… vitamin B6 should be used by everybody, it is a co-factor in the production of every neurotransmitter”
“I use tyrosine as a test to see if someone has depleted dopamine”
“Central nervous system fatigue is not a thing, you don’t fatigue the central nervous system, you fatigue neurotransmitters or create resistance in the receptors”
“Cortisol is what increases adrenaline, it’s what puts you in that hyped up mode… people call it a stress hormone, that should be a misnomer, it should be called the readiness hormone”
“The Bulgarian lifters are very sensitive to dopamine, have a very high level of both dopamine and serotonin, and have a fairly high amount of dopamine production, even if they are sensitive”
“You could be a 2A with high acetylcholine and high serotonin so you could train almost like a 1B for example”
About Christian Thibaudeau
Christian Thibaudeau has been involved in the business of training for over the last 16 years. During this period, he worked with athletes from 28 different sports. He has been “Head Strength Coach” for the Central Institute for Human Performance (official center of the St. Louis Blues).
His specialty: being a generalist. He assists his athletes to develop the necessary qualities to increase their performances (eg: muscle mass, power, explosiveness, coordination). His work method enabled him to lead several successful athletes in a multitude of different disciplines.
Christian is a prolific writer with three books published, each of which translated into three languages (The Black Book of Training Secrets, Theory and Application of Modern Strength and Power Methods, High Threshold Muscle Building). In addition, Christian is co-author with Paul Carter in a new book, which will soon be released. He is also the author of two DVDs (Cluster Training, Mechanical Drop Sets).
Christian is also a senior author and head writer for the E-Magazine T-Nation his articles are read by over 200,000 people every week.
He competed in weightlifting at the national level as well as bodybuilding, He was also a football coach for 8 years.
As a lecturer he has given conferences and seminars in both the United States and Europe, to audiences ranging from amateur athletes to health professionals and coaches of all types.
Christian Thibaudeau popularized the Neurotyping system. Neural optimization supersedes hormonal optimization because the neural response affects the hormonal response. This is essentially the founding principle and inspiration behind Christian Thibaudeau’s Neurotyping System. The bottom line is simple: you are more likely to train hard, be focused and stay motivated if you like the type of training you are doing, and a training that goes against your nature causes a greater stress response that hinders optimal progression. “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” – Albert Einstein
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