Today’s episode features Mike Salemi. Mike specializes in human performance and is a sought after international presenter in the field of health and fitness. He has a diverse background in strength and conditioning and has competed over the course of 15+ years at an elite level in Powerlifting and Kettlebell Sport.
Through his own path of resolving sport-related injuries, Mike understands the importance of integrating the body, mind and spirit as a means to foster high performance for the long term. His motivation is to help athletes, fitness professionals, and coaches discover their own potential from the inside out. He has extensive experience learning from Paul Chek, and integrating this into a holistic method of athletic performance.
For this podcast, which was recorded in-person, Mike takes us through how his injuries in his athletic experience provided a gateway for him to learn more about his body and move into another realm of movement. One of the big things Mike shares with us is his use of “working in” (as opposed to working out), which he learned from Paul Chek, and how to use this as a means to improve athletic recovery and psychological performance in competition. Mike and I worked out together prior to this recording, and I was able to experience first-hand his integration of breathing into various athletic movements with a HIRTS band and the Bulgarian (Suples) bag.
Mike also shares with us thoughts on tonic vs. phasic muscle system balance, and how to fix it (which has striking resemblance to the performance of extreme ISOs in Jay Schroeder’s system), as well as how he incorporates ELDOA stretching into his practice.
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
- How Mike has utilized band work as a creative, flow based series to train the body
- What Mike has learned coming off of powerlifting in terms of training the body from a functional perspective
- Working out versus working in and the impact of working in on holistic high performance
- Psychological and recovery benefits of “working in” techniques
- How to get started with “working in”
- Tonic vs. Phasic system imbalances and how to assess and correct them
- Mike’s use of ELDOA work in his training
Mike Salemi Quotes
“The link between grip and shoulder stability, I’ve seen a lot of people working with these tools (Suples Bag) increase shoulder stability in overhead movements and such, because they can irradiate the tension from the grip all the way through into the shoulder joint”
“When it comes to sport specific qualities, you need to have freedom of movement, and integration with the breath”
“Uncontrolled deceleration is where I see most all the injuries happen, especially in the planes we don’t train”
“Rotation is probably one of the most important patterns for day to day living and sport, and we never train it”
“Through every injury, is what I found is it opened to the door to understanding myself better and what I was missing in my own training”
“Paul (Chek) put an emphasis on balancing the body not only structurally, but energetically”
“A working out exercise is an energy expenditure activity, working in is an energy cultivating activity”
“If you teach someone something but you don’t live it, I think people pick up on that”
“You can pick a very familiar movement (for working in) done bodyweight, you take that movement, and then there are four criteria that show if you are working out and in a sympathetic state: Number one is if you are sweating; if you are sweating you know you are working out. Two is digestion, if you can’t do the working in exercise on a full stomach, then you know it’s not activating the parasympathetic nervous system. The third is the tongue should stay moist, and the fourth/fifth is the heart rate and respiratory rate should not elevate”
“I’ll use (working in) as its own dedicated practice for 20 minutes where the only goal and objective is not technical movement… working in movements are less technical, allow the breath to guide the movement”
“On any movement that involves flexion, internal rotation and adduction, that brings that body into the fetal position, when the rib cage closes down, then that is naturally matched with exhalation. So in a breathing squat, I’m exhaling on the way down. When the rib cage is opening (such as the way up), I’m inhaling, so I’m exciting the extensors of body just by the breathing rhythm.”
“I might superset working in with working out exercises”
“My objective was, how quickly can I reduce my heart rate and respiratory rate during the working in movement”
“If it’s a load that’s typically about 60% of a 1 rep max, there’s a switch that needs to happen (between working out and working in)”
“Just by getting athletes more synchronized “working in” movements, they’ve gotten more connected with their body, and into flow states or visualization states they can use in their performance”
“I’m training much less than I’ve ever did, and the results are more and more”
“The real therapeutic benefits come from 20 minutes of continuous (working in) work”
“(To correct tonic muscle weakness/imbalance) the corrective exercise in setting that base for the first 2 months, I barely lifted a kettlebell, really really set up the ability for me to stay in the groove”
“The athlete that can make rep 1 look like rep 100 almost look identical, that is the master…. conditioning that postural system was huge for me so that I could go for longer durations”
“The threshold is 3 minutes to really dip into that side (tonic/postural muscle training)”
Show Notes
Mike demonstrates banded movement work using a flow style with integrated breathing.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bxc0A-ChTbk/
Mike works on the Bulgarian bag, a training tool used for grip strength, shoulder mobility/strength and total body fluidity. It was originally developed to train wrestlers.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bww5cVBDTG_/
“Working In”, a system designed to assist with restoring parasympathetic and energetic balance in the body that I’ve already found good success with using since this show was recorded.
ELDOA stretching example
About Mike Salemi
Mike Salemi specializes in human performance and is a sought after international presenter in the field of health and fitness. Mike has a diverse background in strength and conditioning and has competed over the course of 15+ years at an elite level in Powerlifting and Kettlebell Sport. Mike was the 2017 world champion in the long cycle kettlebell clean and jerk (WAKSC) and has also achieved “master of sport” status in this regard. He also has served as a NCAA DI strength coach at Santa Clara University, as well as working with elite athletes across a wide range of sports.
Through his own path of resolving sport-related injuries, Mike understands the importance of integrating the body, mind and spirit as a means to foster high performance for the long term. His motivation is to help athletes, fitness professionals, and coaches discover their own potential from the inside out.
Mike focuses on teaching educational workshops, certifications and creating programs on unconventional training that build more balanced athletes. He has numerous certifications including ELDOA, FRC, USAW and CHEK Institute.
Transcripts:
Mike Salemi: Especially because I think we were discussing earlier like a lot of athletes are very tense and very, not only sympathetic dominant, but they hold a lot of like muscle tone. Like, they’re always like ready to go.
Mike Salemi: So what I’ve found is just from getting them to synchronize working in movements, breath with movement, this type of breathing rhythm, they’ve gotten so much more connected with their body, and also been able to enter like flow state or visualization states that they can use in their performance, because a lot of my visualization work for competing and stuff like that, it all started with working in movements, taking movements that were not scary or threatening, taking a squat, and then just literally trying to go for 10, 15, 20 minutes and just synchronize exhaling down, inhaling up, going as slow as I can. And through that repetitive movement, you start the creativity. The mind, all these things start opening up, and so that’s where I really started exploring with meditation and visualization stuff, is through the working in stuff that Paul taught me.
Joel Smith: That was holistic performance expert Mike Salemi speaking on utilizing working in breathing techniques to optimize an athlete’s flow state, creativity and reduce sympathetic dominance in their performance training. You’re listening to the Just Fly Performance Podcast.
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Joel Smith: Welcome to Episode 150 of the Just Fly Performance Podcast. I’m your host, Joel Smith. We made it. We are on the sesquicentennial episode. We’ve put in the miles. It’s really cool to be at this point. I don’t know. For some reason, Episode 100 seemed like the big landmark, but 150’s cool, too. Anyways, for the show today, we have an awesome holistic human performance experience with coach and world champion kettlebell athlete, Mike Salemi.
Joel Smith: Mike was recommended to me by… I put out kind of basically like a little survey on Instagram a while ago on who should I have on the show, and Mike was one of the names that was put back by the other users on Instagram. I’ll admit, I actually didn’t know who Mike was, but I’m really happy, whoever that was, put his name out there because I am such a better coach now as a result of having spent a few hours with Mike, both being able to work out with him. We did this episode, recorded it in person, and also just hear him talk on the utilization of working in and breathing and being able to put athletes in a more flow state to get, not only more out of their performance, but it’s also just a good thing to do as a human being if we’re thinking about how we treat and engage our athletes.
Joel Smith: Obviously, we want to make their performance better. It’s nice, well first if you’re on the physical prep sector, it’s like, “How can I make you stronger and help you jump higher and help you be more functional relative to the needs of your support?” But then we zoom out a little more, and it’s, “Okay, how can I enhance the innate machinery, psychological machinery that you have to enhance your creativity and flow in your sport?” Then we zoom out even more, and we can say, “How can I just help you to learn to be a healthier and better functioning and happier human being, especially as I’m teaching you these training principles that you’re going to use for your whole life?” That’s where having this talk and work out with Mike was fantastic.
Joel Smith: Long story short, I was able to not only record a podcast in person, but get a workout beforehand with Mike. Anytime you work out with a world champion in something, it’s a potentially life-changing experience. A lot of these are life-changing experiences for me when able to work out with some of these other guests on the show, just because it’s an awesome way. Talking with someone about training is one thing, but actually being able to experience a workout and engage in that is another. So that was a fantastic opportunity.
Joel Smith: Mike’s going to get into his background as we get into the show, but he has had a tremendous ride, incredible mentorships, and multiple sports that he’s gone through himself as an athlete. Mike carries a view of performance that we can all learn from, looking at things from all angles of the equation. On the show, he is going to talk about working out versus working in, using breathing as a tool to stimulate the system in a way that helps us to be recovered and more focused. He’s going to talk about… and him having learned that from Paul Chek, who is the OG of holistic performance. Paul has been a huge impact on my own life. Mike is also going to get into some really cool ideas on the phasic and tonic systems, training and imbalances, which actually fits in with some J Schrader stuff that I think is really cool, and finally he’s going to chat a little bit on ELDOA stretching and how he utilizes that in his performance training system.
Joel Smith: This was a really cool episode. I will say I talk a lot about the work we did on the show. The workout briefly, head to the show notes on Just Fly Sports. I have some videos that Mike shot, or I shot with Mike revolving around that process. It’s also on recent on my Instagram. But basically we’re using a Hertz band and a Bulgarian bag in more of a, I guess you could call like an energy return flowing manner, where like the band, you could wrap around various joints, and twist to the other direction, having some basic resisted rotational movement, but integrating breathing into all that. So basically worked out on a low to moderate intensity that put a high priority on mobility, rotation and breathing. It was an awesome workout, and a lot of fun as well, and I learned a ton.
Joel Smith: My whole next week, I had a different thought process. Honestly, I have this new almost way and ideas of warming up athletes as well as using restorative parasympathetic based means in their own training. This was just a really cool show with Mike. Enjoy it. Let’s get on to it.
Joel Smith: Man, Mike, that was a heck of a workout you just took me through. Thank you for that, by the way. That was exactly what my body needed today.
Mike Salemi: That was a good time. That was a lot of fun.
Joel Smith: Hey, man, how long have you been working with those, the bands for in that manner?
Mike Salemi: So the band, you know the band work is actually something quite new, like really only in the last about two years. The band training that I took you through was all developed by the former US Olympic Greco-Roman wrestling coach, Ivan Ivanov. As I was sharing with you, like the bands are probably what I feel one of the biggest kept secrets in strength and conditioning because really it’s just one band or two bands. Like, I take them with me in my backpack. I take them everywhere.
Mike Salemi: But it’s not so much the band that’s important, it’s the creativity of the movements, and the training application. So really I never really got introduced to that form of training until I started visiting Boise with coach Ivan Ivanov and really started working with him, so just in the last like two years.
Joel Smith: Yeah. Then the bag stuff, man, I mean I wouldn’t want to challenge you to a thumb war. My thumb was so trashed after. I was trying to hide it. I was trying to hide how bad my thumb was hurt. But you’ve been working with the bags, the Bulgarian bag, or the… oh, not the Bulgarian bag. I just did a podcast with Max Aita, so I’m stuck on Bulgarian, but the Suples bag.
Mike Salemi: Yeah. Suplese Bulgarian bag, okay? Yeah. What’s funny is you mentioned about the thumbs, so that is the limiting factor, not just the thumbs, but the entire forearms and the grip in general. That’s usually where everyone, that’s the limiting factor specially when starting off, but what’s funny is anytime I teach a cert or anything, the only people, and it happens, almost 10 times out of 10, when I ask like midway through, I’m like, “How’s everyone’s grip doing? How’s everyone’s hand doing?” Everyone’s like, “Oh my god. They’re fatigued. They’re dying.” The only person that usually has no problem with their grips, and it’s almost 10 times out of 10, are manual therapists.
Joel Smith: Really?
Mike Salemi: So I was just teaching in Boise… or not in Boise. I’m sorry… in Austin Texas at Paleo f(x). At four workshops, in two of the workshops, only two people were like, “No, my grip’s fine.” And I pointed them out, right in the center of the workshop, I was like, “You wouldn’t happen to be a manual therapist would you?” They go, “Yes. In fact, I am.” So it’s like the only people that are just using their thumbs all day and their hands all day seem to do okay with it in the beginning.
Joel Smith: Yeah. Thumbs of steel. It’s like ultimate specificity, right? Or they can probably like manage the tension, too. Like, you’re not supposed like push too hard, or you’ll blow your thumbs up or whatever. That’s awesome, man. It’s like I can see the research. The adductor pollicis… Hell, I’m probably saying the wrong one, but like test strength the manual therapist versus the average population. I’m sure it’s quite a bit stronger.
Mike Salemi: Well, even like Ivan’s wrestlers. Like when I was out there training, like his nine-year-old… Like he told me, he goes, “Even if my nine-year-old, if they lock grips on you in the wrestling match or they grab a hold of your wrist,” he says, “as soon as they tie up with you or grab you,” says, “you’re done. If they can get a hand on you,” he says, “You’ll be thrown. You’ll be tossed.” So it’s like even their nine-year-olds, whatever, they’ve just been conditioned for three, four, five days a week on these tools that it’s like they have just like a impenetrable grip.
Joel Smith: Yeah. It makes me think. I just did a podcast with Ben Patrick talking about like the same thing, but for like the feet, and the knees of like a basketball player, and a jumper, like that being the critical link, and I think about… I’m not as familiar with wrestling, but just working on that bag, I’m like, “Man,” like I feel like just the way my hand felt, I felt that link would be… I mean, get nothing but way, way stronger after a period of time working on that thing.
Mike Salemi: Yeah, totally. Then I think too, just you made me think of something about just the link between grip and shoulder stability. Like, I’ve seen like a lot of people working with these tools, improve shoulder stability and overhead movements and such, just because they have more… they can irradiate that tension from the grip all the way through into the shoulder joints. I’ve seen transfer into multiple different areas, which has been really cool.
Joel Smith: Yeah. It’s always awesome trying one thing. It’s like, “Oh wait, this got stronger too.” Those are the best, right?
Mike Salemi: Yeah, totally.
Joel Smith: Before we get too far into the training, too, because I really want to get into some… I mean, that band stuff was like legendary, man. I’m excited to get into that. So your background, you were like a gymnast, power lifter. Can you just give us the two-minute version of your strength journey before we get into the training stuff?
Mike Salemi: Sure. Yeah. I was so fortunate I think growing up. Thankfully my parents, they knew that they wanted me to have at least some base in sports, in movement quality, in movement health, from I think just a mental perspective but also just understanding my body and awareness at a deeper level. From a young age, I think my brother who I’m really tight and close with, he was a gymnast since he was like five years old, yeah, like five, five-and-a-half, competed for, I don’t even know, like 15 years, like something like that. I got into it slightly later, I think when I was about seven or eight, because he’s two-ish years older than me as well.
Mike Salemi: I started in gymnastics until I was about, I think like nearly 14, had some phenomenal coaches. My coach in gymnastics was a two-time Olympian, Krasimir Dunev of Bulgaria, and just like a phenom. He was the first person ever to do six release moves in a row consecutively on the high bar.
Joel Smith: oh, wow.
Mike Salemi: Yeah. He was a silver medalist in, I think it was Atlanta on the high bar. But I never went super far on gymnastics. I had a pinched nerve in my back. Like, there’s a specific athletic profile to be exceptional at gymnastics. I was good, but I was by no means like a high, high, high level gymnast, but it did develop the base level of strength, awareness, body control, all the things that now like I appreciate so, so much more.
Mike Salemi: After gymnastics, I transitioned, due to that injury, into competitive powerlifting, because the person who rehabilitated me was a competitive powerlifter, a chiropractor. He saw that I just really loved strength and conditioning. Like, we would always talk about my workouts in gymnastics. We just really, really hit it off. His name is Mike Ludovico. He brought me into a basement powerlifting club. From there, like it was in its own respect, it was like a Mecca in the Bay Area for powerlifting. Like you needed a key to get in. There was like 16 to 18 members. Everyone was super serious and competitive.
Mike Salemi: I went there. Then towards the end of that journey, I started training at Westside Barbell in Ohio with Louie Simmons. I spent about a month in Ohio to really study him, understand his methods more deeply. When I got back, I started strength and conditioning and was a coach at… No. I’m sorry. At that time, I was strength and conditioning coach for a college, at San Mateo Assistant Men’s Baseball, Notre Dame Women’s Basketball, volleyball. So I was a strength and conditioning coach and was looking for more things that I could do with my athletes. That led me to Olympic weightlifting because I was like, “If I really want to incorporate some of the Olympic movements, I really want to be proficient. What better way than to dive in and compete and have a great coach like Jim Schmitz.”
Mike Salemi: So did Olympic weightlifting, and while I was taking certification, still hunting, still trying to find things that I could do with my athletes, especially on the courts. That’s when I started coming across the kettlebell. So fast forward. That was 14, 15, maybe 15 years ago that I started kettlebell training, started doing more serts and whatnot, and found kettlebell sport. So I’ve been competing in kettlebell sport at a high level for almost 10 years now.
Mike Salemi: That’s like the accelerated version of the background, but it’s really been a base for sports, but really as a gymnast, that was the foundation. Now training so much with wrestlers and working with fighters with the Suples tools, I see it coming full circle. Like, I can appreciate so much more the importance of movement quality now more than ever, to be honest.
Joel Smith: Yeah, I love that you started as a gymnast. One of the things I always think about… well, having kids myself too, James Smith, or the Thinkersmith in the sports performance world talks about like kids need to do, basically if they can do gymnastics, track and swimming, like those are like three awesome base sports to teach you. Like your movement literacy is just so big. It empowers you to do whatever the next thing is.
Joel Smith: Especially it seems like female weightlifters right now are like gymnastic backgrounds, and then go and do that. Going into powerlifting, and coming off of powerlifting into kettlebells and everything you’re doing now, and just, again, I was just so blown away with the movement quality. I almost reference things compared to how I feel just playing a game of basketball, where my body is just natural mode, just playing and breathing as normal, versus like I think a more restrictive, like if I’m doing a squat and holding my breath, or something like that, it’s just, I felt so good.
Joel Smith: What have you learned kind of coming off of powerlifting in terms of how the human body should function and how we should train it from a general human function perspective?
Mike Salemi: I found that at least in my own experience as an athlete, as a coach, like I think the powerlifts are great, especially if you’re trying to focus on absolute strength, especially if you’re trying to be a powerlifter. But when it comes to just sports, tennis, baseball, hockey, like you’re very rarely, if ever going to move in one plane. A lot of times like I think, at least in my experience, a lot of coaches think about not only the movements could potentially be selected better, more applicable for sports, the planes of movement, movement patterns, but also understanding like there’s an optimal level of strength that you need for a particular sport.
Mike Salemi: So a lifter doesn’t necessarily, like a gymnast does not need to bench press 300 pounds. They need to develop relative strength, body control, movement through every plane. What I’ve found was is… I mean, I was competing in powerlifting. So as my sport, I thought it was fantastic. I needed to train as much as I was training, and I developed great levels of base strength. But when I first started making the transition, thankfully I had the gymnastics background that helped me, but it was not easy in the beginning to learn a lot of these movements that we did today because they take coordination, they take mastering your body through changing levels and hip mobility, shoulder mobility, your changing directions.
Mike Salemi: What I’ve found is, is by training in those tools and developing skills in those tools, I’ve had so much more athleticism in other areas of my life so that I can hop into… If I hopped onto the jujitsu mats, I would get owned because there’s a level of technical expertise, but I can move, I can shift from position to position. My hips are open. As long as someone teaches me the techniques, which takes time, the base is there of movement quality.
Mike Salemi: So it’s almost like, oh we say, like when it comes to sports especially, like get the body to move as a body should move. Get the shoulder to move like a shoulder should move. The hip should move like a hip should move. The spine to move like a spine should move. Then, you’ll be able to do whatever it is you want. But if we train in just these isolated planes, like the only time that… even with the bench press, like even if I do do a bench press, like I’ll do it on a burst resistant Swiss ball or something like that where my shoulders can move through the full range. I’ll be stabilizing almost like in a bridge position, so there’s that component, or if maybe I was doing a floor press, maybe there’s an application to like jujitsu when you’re on the mat, your elbows are on the floor, and you have to push an opponent away.
Mike Salemi: But when it comes to these sports-specific qualities, like you need to have freedom of movement. That is such an integration with the breath. So what I’ve found is these tools have been just amazing for movement quality, multi-planner movements. Like we went over today, and maybe we didn’t even discuss it, but like the ability to accelerate and more importantly decelerate, in my opinion, is probably one of the biggest missing aspects in athletic performance.
Mike Salemi: Like when I’m working with athletes, it is super important that they’ve got the motor, the gas, but I’m really concerned is what is their ability to decelerate their body under control, because uncontrolled deceleration is where I see most all the injuries happen, especially in the planes that we don’t train. So when we look at the Bulgarian bag, it’s phenomenal for frontal plane movement and rotational movement. You can train front to back, but most all sports are rotation, whether you’re a javelin thrower, like we were discussing, a baseball player, a hockey player, you’re a football player, you’re throwing a pitch. Whatever it is, rotation is probably one of the most important patterns of movement for day-to-day living and in sport, and we never train it.
Mike Salemi: So I’ve found just so much application training rotation, accelerating, decelerating, mastering your movements just through these tools.
Joel Smith: Yeah. I was going to say as soon as you said decelerating, I was thinking about our work with the Bulgarian bag there, and the fact that that whole process that we went through… and I should probably get into like the specs before I’m like, “Yeah. That awesome workout we did, bro.”
Mike Salemi: What did we do exactly.
Joel Smith: Like, “That was killer.” Wait. What is that awesome workout? But like everything was flowing. It was always like you talk about like the shoulders and hips and feet as a series of spiraling figure eights, and running and things like that. Like, it’s always spiraling. Energy is always returning into the system. So everything we did there was pretty much the same thing. It was always returning the system, versus even like some regular pre-hab. Like just if I’m going to work my rotator cuff with a rotator cuff band, I’m kind of just working in one motion back and forth. That’s not the same as something that’s actually almost spinning, if you will, and you have to continually…
Joel Smith: It’s like you are moving your body around it, versus like just a muscleman and it controlling something. So it’s cool to get that sense. But yeah, let’s jump into it. A big part of what we just did was the… well, I know working in was a big part of that and the breathing. So maybe we can kick it off with that, because I think that’s something that I know in the circles that I talk to, it’s not discussed a lot, like breathing patterns, especially the breathing we were doing. So could you kind of break that down a little bit and how you’re rocking with that?
Mike Salemi: Yeah. I’m so stoked you mentioned that, because that’s also another area. We talked about rotation as a big missing element in most strength and conditioning programs. We touched on that. The other thing that’s incredibly missing, at least in my observation, is this aspect of working in. I’ll kind of break down what working in is, where I learned it, and how I see it fitting into athletic performance, and really holistic high-performance, because that’s my mission, is to spread holistic high-performance to as many coaches, as many schools, as many teams, as many athletes as possible.
Mike Salemi: Through injuries, I think pretty much transitioning out of every sport, from gymnastics, to powerlifting, to Olympic weightlifting, to kettlebell sport, every single transition came via typically an injury. So I think injuries come along with… Anytime you’re trying to reach a high-level goal, winning a world championship, or something significant, the risk of injury goes higher and higher, right, the volume of training goes up. The imbalances go up. The repetitive strains go up.
Mike Salemi: But the interesting thing was is through every injury, what I’ve found is it opened the door to a whole new world of understanding myself better, understanding what I was missing in my own training. And in kettlebell sport specifically, I had an orthopedic injury to my left forearm where on every single competition, where in kettlebell sport, we lift two kettlebells. I compete with double 32 kilos, so 72-ish pounds in each hand, and we have to clean and jerk the weight for 10 minutes unbroken without setting it down. No pause. Your only rest period is at chest level or at overhead level.
Mike Salemi: It’s a brutal, brutal movement and a brutal sport, and on every single like hard effort in the gym or in competition, my left forearm would swell, pool with blood and then I would lose all feeling in the hand. I went through two and half years of nine different practitioners, no one could really figure it out. It wasn’t until I started working with one of my mentors, and now close friends, Paul Chek, who specializes in… I mean, Paul Chek, if anyone’s not familiar with Paul, he’s a holistic health practitioner, been practicing for 30 years. He pretty much specializes in medical failures. So from just cases that either docs don’t want to take, or orthopedic injuries that sports teams can’t figure out, they’ll bring him in to figure what’s the solution.
Mike Salemi: So I ended up working with him over two and a half years. He put such an emphasis not only on balancing the body structurally, but balancing the body energetically. So if we look at working out movements, which most everyone’s familiar with. So like training in the gym, a hard workout, a really tough session in the pool, a hard tennis match, those are energy expenditure activities. Those are typically sympathetic dominant activities, things that send you into a flight or fight state, right?
Mike Salemi: So that’s typically where I see, and I was myself, for so much of my time. I was operating continuously always in this stressful state, and I wasn’t incorporating exercises, modalities that actually brought energy vitality, resources back into the system. Simply stated, a working out exercise is an energy-expenditure activity. A working in exercise is an energy-cultivating activity, an activity that brings in more resources than it costs the body to output.
Mike Salemi: There’s four criteria that I learned from Paul in terms of how do you know if you’re working in or working out. A working in exercise can be any movement. You could do a squat. And a lot of times when I’m working with athletes, they like, “Oh…” I don’t know if they haven’t told me this, because I think there’s a difference if you teach someone something and you don’t live it, then I think people can pick up on that, but I usually haven’t met very much resistance at all when I’m bringing this stuff into athletic teams. It might look a little funny in the beginning, if people aren’t familiar with meditation or whatnot, but I think today people know how important it is just to get that edge.
Mike Salemi: So you can pick a very familiar movement. You can pick a deadlift type movement but do it with a dowel rod. You can take a bodyweight squat, you could do a movement that looks like a cable push and rotate. You can take any movement you want, done bodyweight, and essentially you take that movement, and what you do is you… the four criteria, if anyone or a combination of these things happen, you know you’re working out.
Mike Salemi: Number one is if you’re sweating. You know you’re in a sympathetic dominance, that you’re more working out. If your digestion doesn’t improve, so like if you can’t do the working in exercise on a full, full stomach, like a Thanksgiving meal, then you know it’s not activating the parasympathetic nervous system. The third is the tongue should stay moist. If the tongue dries out, you know you’re working out. Then the fourth/fifth is the heart rate should not elevate, and the respiratory rate should not elevate.
Mike Salemi: So if you can keep the heart rate at a steady level, the respiratory rate at a steady level, not sweat, have an exercise that improves the digestion, and keep the tongue moist, then those four to five criteria let you know you’re stimulating the parasympathetic nervous system, and you’re really bringing energy and resources into the system.
Mike Salemi: I’ll use that as its own dedicated practice, for let’s say 20 minutes, kind of like a tai chi practice where I’ll go barefoot outside. As you can see like there’s a stone circle out there in my yard, like stacking heavy stones, grass. So I’ll go barefoot and maybe I’ll do 20 minutes of a working in exercise where the only goal and objective is not technical movement.
Mike Salemi: That’s honestly one big thing that’s interesting as athletes, we all want to do things perfectly, like perfect spinal alignment, perfect all these things, but working in movements are less technical. You’re just trying to feel the movement, allow your body to go into these natural positions, allow the breath to guide the movement. And on every movement, there’s a specific breathing rhythm that corresponds to the movement.
Mike Salemi: For example, on any movement that involves flexion, internal rotation, and adduction, so any movement that brings the body into the fetal position, when the rib cage closes down, that’s naturally a match with exhalation. So if I’m doing the lowering phase on a breathing squat, I’m exhaling very slowly on the way down, four to six seconds, or as long as I can, and then as I extend the hips, extend the spine, externally rotate, supinate the hand, and abduct, or essentially come out of the fetal position, then I’m naturally, when the rib cage is opening, I’m inhaling. So I’m exciting the extensors of the body just by the breathing rhythm.
Mike Salemi: So you could use, as long as you incorporate breath with movement in that way, and you adhere to those four to five criteria, you can do any movement, it can be a working in exercise. 20 minutes is a great therapeutic dose. But honestly, even one minute, two minute, three minute can be phenomenal. And I’ll also superset it with working out exercises. So I might do a working out exercise, and I might also challenge my athletes. Let’s just say… I’m just trying to think what was my most recent workout. I was doing a kettlebell, kind of like a juggling type movement. I was doing a clean, and juggling it, catching the kettlebell on with one arm at shoulder level.
Mike Salemi: So I was alternating like this kind of hopping clean movement, which got my heart rate up, and then during the rest period, I was doing a standing movement, called the cross crawl. My objective, I didn’t set the timer how long I was going to work in. My objective was, how quickly can I reduce my respiratory rate and my heart rate through the working in movement? As soon as I feel like it’s calmed down to a decent level or a normal level, that’s my cue to go back in. But if I stay super high heart rate, then I can’t go back in.
Mike Salemi: I would do anywhere from three to five rounds, two exercises, one working out movement, one working in, and really almost like in a competitive way, how quickly, how efficiently, how quickly can I synchronize breath with movement and calm my body down.
Joel Smith: I like what you mentioned about pairing extension and inhalation. I know like working in is more of the parasympathetic, but like I know… I was just having this conversation, because I’m pretty well-versed in like Postural Restoration Institute, and talking about getting the rib cage down, and basically getting, I guess, for lack of a better description, like the typical squatting, chest back, butt out, like trying to get rid of that. I was talking about the guy, Charlie Reed, I met at a Pat Davidson seminar, talking about how really performances, like the best sprinters, it’s always inhalation and extension, like the chest is expanded.
Joel Smith: I’m glad you just mentioned the inhalation kind of like stimulating that extensor system. It’s interesting because usually you do a deadlift or a squat, and you would exhale on the way up. Like, that’s what we’re kind of taught to do. If someone was going to go heavy in the weight room, like or someone was going to really like get after something like that, are you still doing that, or are you, okay, you’re going back to normal kind of just for pressurizing the system or things like that.
Mike Salemi: Yeah. There’s a switch that needs to happen. Usually the rule of thumb, you can think of it in a few different ways. If it’s a load that’s typically, and there’s some room for play here, but if it’s a load that’s typically above 60% of a one-rep max, there’s a switch that needs to happen, or if it’s a movementm an exercise, a training activity, if you can do it at a conversational intensity, then that lets you know you can use more that working in breath, but as soon as… because respiration is so, so, so high on the totem pole for control systems of the body, and just survival in general, it is the primary system.
Mike Salemi: So respiration always reigns supreme, but as soon as stability of the spine becomes more important than respiration, then we have to switch. So in that situation, if it was a load that, let’s just say above a 60% one-rep max on the squat, on the deadlift, on a press, whatever it is, then what I would do is I would take an inhalation breath, then pressurize the trunk, and depending on the speed of movement, the repetitions and the load, that’s going to vary in terms of am I going to hold my breath the whole movement? Am I going to pressurize exhale? Can I get two or three reps on one breath?
Mike Salemi: But it’s like I think the best analogy for breathing is it’s like a dial. I think in the beginning, it’s helpful to train athletes in terms of, “Okay, let’s do strict working in. Let’s do strict working out.” But ultimately once you learn the idea and the mechanics and you have enough practice, it should happen automatically. If we’re picking up a heavy box from the ground, or whatever, like automatically just to create more stiffness in the system, so we can transfer the force from the legs through the arms and stand up, we should be using some type of bracing type technique. But if it’s a light load, like if you’re picking up your socks, and here’s the thing, if you’re picking up your socks, and you’re bracing, there’s a problem in your inner unit function. So it’s like when you’re picking up your socks, you’re picking up something light, like you should have the breathing rhythm that corresponds to the threat or lack thereof threat.
Mike Salemi: Another way you can think of it is like if you really respect the load, if you need to respect the load, if it’s a heavy, heavy weight, then you have to act in accordance. But if it’s a working in movement, breath with movement, all the things we’re talking about, then utilizing a breath sequence that works with that, I’ve really, really found, especially because I think we were discussing earlier like a lot of athletes are very tense, and very not only sympathetic dominant, but they hold a lot of like muscle tone. Like, they’re always like ready to go.
Mike Salemi: So what I’ve found is just from getting them to synchronize working in movements, breath with movement, this type of breathing rhythm, they’ve gotten so much more connected with their body, and also been able to enter like flow state or visualization states that they can use in their performance.
Joel Smith: That’s awesome.
Mike Salemi: Because a lot of my visualization work for competing and stuff like that, it all started with working in movements, taking movements that were not scary or threatening, taking a squat, and then just literally trying to go for 10, 15, 20 minutes and just synchronize exhaling down, inhaling up, going as slow as I can. And through that repetitive movement, you start the creativity, the mind, all these things start opening up, and so that’s where I really started exploring with meditation and visualization stuff, is through the working in stuff that Paul taught me.
Joel Smith: Yeah. It’s like a gateway, man. I love it.
Joel Smith: Like, yeah. Because I mean, one of the things I always talk about, especially with like my colleagues who work with pros, I mean, anyone who works with high-level athletes, especially once you have basic base of strength, and you’re strong enough to play the game, the grinders in the weight room are not the best athletes. It’s almost like they’re always in that fight or flight. They can’t get out of it. They almost feel like that’s what they need to do to get to the next level. But it’s like what you’re saying is what the best athletes can do, they can shut it off. Like, they can get in that state where they’re creative and flow and visualize. I mean, you look at like what those… like it makes me think of like Steph Curry in warmups, just throwing up some crazy ass three-pointer, and make it…
Joel Smith: It’s just this pure creativity. If you can’t turn stuff off, you’re not going to be able to do those types of things those elite athletes can do. I’m glad I mentioned the 60%. I’m like, “Okay.” You almost think like too it’s like your proportion in the weight room, how much you train above it, and how much you train below it, and that being like a big factor as well, like kind of keeping that in mind on how much your sets are in the state where we can do a natural more breathing cycle and versus the survival cycle, if you will, I guess you could say.
Mike Salemi: Yeah, especially for collegiate athletes and pro athletes who are being, just to be honest, being drug tested. Like, if you’re a natural athlete, it’s like you need to be as smart as possible with as many healing modalities as you can and try to be as efficient as possible with less. So things like hopping in a float tank, working in exercises, those are all your natural recovery modalities. What I’ve found, I’ve always been so like, just like pleasantly surprised that my athletic performance has been still at 32 going up, up, up by relatively speaking, doing less.
Mike Salemi: Like when I’m in a dedicated training cycle, we’re not talking like teaching and stuff like that, when I’m… have a lot of workshops or whatnot, but like when I’m actually in a competitive training cycle, like I’m training much less relatively speaking than I ever did, and the results are getting more and more, because it’s like everything is very, very focused, every exercise, everything has a specific purpose, not only from the physical side, but also how we’re hopefully restoring our bodies energetically. Like, it’s so cool. You can truly, truly achieve more by doing left, if you incorporate some of these things that we’re sharing.
Joel Smith: Yeah. Absolutely. I’m kind of hung up on that gateway and flow. I mean, that could be a whole podcast, man. We’ll have to come back in like a year and all that, but we’ll have to jam on that one, because it’s like everyone can think too those two or three athletes who are just stuck in sympathetic, and how that working in would just be a… revolutionize their process.
Joel Smith: What we just did in our little workout, I mean we were doing like pretty good work with… Well, I mean I was getting tired a little bit, but you were fine, but like, I mean, would that be classified as working in then since we were still sticking with the breathing patterns, like we were doing the band work and the different low polls, and different twists and things like that and manipulations? I mean, that was at a work in intensity, I guess, but it’s like a hybrid of things. Could you explain a little bit about like that dynamics of how you’ve taken the breathing and then mixed it in with your process with like the Bulgarian bag and the band and how… I love how that’s just so minimalist, by the way. I love that you could just throw it in the back of your car and it’s just good to go, too.
Mike Salemi: Yeah. And I’ll incorporate the same and I’ll go into it, but I’ll incorporate the same things with all the unconventional tools in the gym that I have, whether it’s kettlebells. Like, I’ll do a lot of working in and exercise… Like kettlebells, like, man, we’ll have to spend a lot of time. Like we can go in some great, great stuff with kettlebells. But whether the band stuff I would say today, it was essentially out in the threshold, because it’s new movement for you, right? So like you’re adapting to a new stimulus. Like you were sweating, heart rate was going up and stuff like that. You were working. So it’s right there, but we kept the breathing light. So we were using the lightest bands that I have, but the movements were quite demanding, right, but the whole idea was exhale during flexion, and all the cues that we went over, inhaling during extension.
Mike Salemi: So what I took you through, or what I took Joel through was like we did probably, one, two, three, maybe like seven or so movements, seven to eight movements. They’re all total body movements. We did shoulder exercise that resemble Indian clubs, so training the shoulder in its full range of motion, movements that incorporate not only movements that… I don’t know. If you think back to the workout. You remember how like in certain positions, you were losing your balance?
Joel Smith: Yeah.
Mike Salemi: What’s interesting about the band work, which is different than most any other tool that I have used is how do you deal and manage with horizontal forces? So I’ll do my best to explain it on the air, but when you post like a video or something on the moves, so people will understand a little bit more.
Joel Smith: Yeah. I’ll go in the show notes. Yeah.
Mike Salemi: Yeah. Like when we were doing some of these movements, these combination movements, these movements where you have to combine a squat pattern with a twist pattern, with you’re combining a lunge pattern, I’m thinking, you’re combining a press pattern, a pull pattern, when you’re doing all these movements fluidically, like in the bottom position of one of the movements that we did, essentially we had a band that was pulling horizontally, and we were in the bottom of a lunge pattern.
Mike Salemi: So the band wanted to pull us off of our base. So as a coach, what I’ve found is the tremendous benefit of that is, as the coach, I’m definitely giving cues. We broke down the full movement into three levels of progressions. So you can break it down into levels of progressions. You can also break it down into using lighter band tensions. You can also simplify more by stepping closer to the anchor point, and you can slow down the movement.
Mike Salemi: You have three to four primary ways in which you can regress it for your athletes, but once you teach them the progressions, what I love, and what has been so empowering having studied with Ivan… Ivan, I don’t know. I think I mentioned that he was the former US Olympic coach for Greco-Roman wrestling. Anytime I can get around him, I spend as much time as possible because he is a master of coaching, like how to be a very successful coach especially in a group environment. And the tools and the training system works perfectly with that to where I could have a row, a line of athletes with just a band to an anchor point.
Mike Salemi: Again, it’s not the band that’s special, it’s the training application and the education behind it. But once I teach them the progressions, how to modify, how to work through it, I know if every athlete is working, one, because there’s going to be tension in the band. If the band is slack, there’s going to be no feedback, and I know the athlete’s not working. The other thing I know is the band and the movements allow the athletes to self teach themselves. Because if you lose your balance, then you know you need to self adjust. So I have to do less as a coach and essentially the student becomes his own best teacher. That is so, so, so empowering as a coach to where, yes, I’m helping out if I see a gross movement error, but for the most part, they know if they’re doing it right, and they make those fine tune adjustments that are directly going to relate to their performance on the quarter on the field.
Mike Salemi: I think I kind of went like a little bit… That was one thing that I went a little astray there to answer your question, but we use working in breathing modalities, kept up breath with movements, so we got a lot of pumping in the system. We didn’t stress it. We kept the reps not too much, but it was more just to enjoy the movements, change, change levels, multi-planer, multi-pattern movements, movements that synchronize one to the other, and truly learning to master our body through these positions that we rarely ever train and condition in.
Joel Smith: Yeah. It’s just basically the magic of it is combining flowing movements that are cycling energy with the breathing, like cycling breathing. It’s like those two put together, I think, and it’s like this infinite creativity too, but obviously there’s this level of simplicity you start with with the athletes, but I mean, I got it pretty well. I felt like I was kind of learning a dance move, a little bit, but it was easy because I did get it. It was way better than my salsa classes, way, way better.
Mike Salemi: But by the end, you nailed it.
Joel Smith: Yeah. That was good.
Mike Salemi: By the end, by your last set, you hit every position. You had your balance point. That’s what’s cool too, in a relatively short amount of time. Like that was a total body movement, total body workout, multi-planes, multi-patterns, and you learned it in a matter of five minutes. So it was like, as a coach, that’s awesome. When you got 20, 30 athletes or 15 athletes. That’s what’s been so refreshing for me as a coaches is to utilize these tools and these training systems that truly make coaching a lot easier.
Joel Smith: Yeah. Obviously with the working in and breathing, so you would do that, like if I’m just doing a typical work… Let’s just say I’m doing a typical, like maybe like a workout you’d see at a university, like a clean squat bench or something like that, would you do a working in between every like set, between every exercise, after the workout is over, before? What are some kind of integration… Like if people just trying to dip their toes in this stuff. They’re like, “Okay. Maybe I’ll try this on the cool down.” What would be like a recommendation to say, “Hey, how do I get my feet wet with just, one, using this stuff?” And maybe with a group of athletes, too, that has never heard of it, and it’s like, “Okay. Why am I doing this between my sets?” Maybe what are some basic principles first just starting off with it, and how you put it in like a mainstream workout?
Mike Salemi: Sure. Where I would suggest starting is we discussed those four or five criteria, so those are the things that would let you know, no matter what movement you choose, like if you’re working out or working in. So definitely adhering to those. Then what I would get, it’s only like 20 bucks, but Paul Chek’s book How to Eat, Move and be Healthy. In that book, he breaks the bodies up into six zones. I forget what the title of the chapter is, but it’s probably like Energy Cultivation or something like that.
Mike Salemi: Essentially, he gives like anywhere from I think like three to six exercises for every zone of the body. Zone one would be around the area of the pelvis. Zone two, around the area of the belly. Then around the sternum, around the heart, around the throat, and then around the head, and slightly above the head. So six zones of the bodies, and exercise that stimulate those zones.
Mike Salemi: Now he gives you actually in that book, you can choose what zone you want to work on based off of just preference, if you like a movement, but also in the beginning of the book, he’s got a lifestyle questionnaire, a physiological load questionnaire. So I use that as one of the questioners when I work with all clients to understand what’s their level of stress like, sleep like, nutritional stress, all that stuff, and then based off of when you fill out that assessment, it will guide you into a suggested zone that you should work on to bring more oxygen, more energy, and more vitality to that area.
Mike Salemi: So just starting with that book is a great starting point. I would not, or at least how I use it, I don’t use working in before a workout. I would say you could use it in the middle of the workout, but I would say would require a little bit more skill to guide that, because like it would be hugely beneficial, but what I found just in my own personal experience, there’s movements that tend to work really well with working in and movements that maybe not so much.
Mike Salemi: So like one rep absolute strength activities, where you’re just like you’re getting yourself fired up and someone’s giving you a smelling salt and you’re sniffing it, like heavy metals in the background, it’s going to be pretty hard to come out of that.
Joel Smith: Yeah. Quick, turn the music down.
Mike Salemi: Yeah. Quick, turn the music down. While plates are dropping behind you. So you want to consider the environment that you’re in. I feel like more, they tend to work better with more endurance and strength endurance type movements. So whether you’re doing kettlebell work for swings, 10, 15 swings and on the rest period, you want to choose a preferred working in movement, you can combine those two, or let’s say you choose a circuit. Circuit training’s good. So if you’re doing three to four exercises in a circuit, let’s say you’re doing a squat pattern, a lunge pattern, a press pattern, and a pull pattern, and let’s say you do those, and then your rest period is anywhere from one to two minutes, or until your heart rate calms down, you can choose any of the movements in How to Eat, Move and be Healthy. Even just a squat can be a work in movement.
Mike Salemi: Outside of working during the middle of a workout, just doing it after a workout or on an off day, especially on an off day or in the evening could be great. Anything that you do, even if it’s one to five minutes is going to be great, but the real, in my opinion, like the real, real therapeutic benefits comes from like 20 minutes of continuous work. So what I would suggest is… and that might have to be on an off day or on an evening, but a lot of times like, let’s say while I’m cooking dinner. So while the food’s in the oven, or not on the stove top, or while it’s in the oven, I’ll use that time to either do working in movements outside, or if I’m doing a sauna session, while the sauna’s warming up, I’ll do it, but a few tips in terms of how to get a lot more out of it.
Mike Salemi: What I would do is if you have the choice and the ability to do it based off of your setting and surroundings, definitely would highly, highly recommend going barefoot, okay, because using a synthetic shoe is not going to really connect you and ground you to the earth and dissipate the energy. So if you can go on a natural surface, like grass and dirt are the best. Next best would be like stone, or even wood can be very good.
Mike Salemi: But if you have to do it on a synthetic surface like carpet or something, it’s okay. Like you still get the pumping and the oxygenation, but the better, better thing is to ground and go outside, so natural surface, barefoot connection to the earth, also not wearing super restrictive clothing. If you have natural fiber clothing, that’s better. I mean anything is going to be better than nothing, but if you’re wearing like Under Armour tights and stuff, those are things that kind of constrict the energetic flow of our bodies.
Mike Salemi: So if you can use cotton clothing, those… it might sound strange to maybe some people who are listening, but having practiced this quite a bit, like it really does make a difference when you’re using natural fiber clothing, you do a working in exercise outside. The best thing I could say is you have nothing to lose but to try it. You literally 10, 20 minutes. Give it a shot. It might take you a few sessions to really feel it, but in a regular practice, I mean it’s really, really cool what can happen if you incorporate it.
Joel Smith: Yeah. It makes me think a little bit of like… I know in track and field, it’s common to, like after a tough workout too, like a parasympathetic… I’m doing finger quotes… like a parasympathetic… like a lot of low intensity stuff to calm the body down, but it’s like I’ve never heard in those text like talking about the breathing like you were just talking about. So if nothing else, like if you’re doing that to calm down, like just follow the breathing, like a squat pattern, you’re exhaling on the way down and inhaling on the way up, or anything.
Joel Smith: Is there anything like if you’re doing a push-up, like anything like… How would you breathe if you were doing a push-up or in that type of setting?
Mike Salemi: Well, push-up, you could certainly. I’ll share what the breathing would be on a push-up. But push-up, unless you have like an amazing strength endurance, like you could do 300 push-ups, you’d probably go sympathetic pretty fast. So as soon as you start really struggling.
Mike Salemi: What I would choose probably better would be like bodyweight, so no resistance, right? So let’s say if I was doing bodyweight, and if someone can imagine let’s say a single arm, let’s say a staggered stance. So kind of like in a moderate lunge stance, where imagine you had a cable on one hand, and you’re doing a push and a rotate, a push and a rotate. So a standing push pattern. So as you’re pushing, if I continue pushing, pushing, pushing, pushing, if I continued that movement, I would almost be entering the fetal position, right?
Mike Salemi: So during pushing, that would be exhalation. As I pull, pull, pull, as the rib cage opens, as I begin extending, I would be inhaling.
Joel Smith: I got you.
Mike Salemi: So it would be exhaling on the push, inhaling on the pull, exhaling on the push, inhaling on the pull.
Joel Smith: Mike, you were talking a little bit too about… I wanted to get to this as well. But like in going with the breathing and how important that is and the working in versus working out. I know you’d mentioned on another podcast, like you had had a imbalance in like your tonic versus your phasic system. I’m assuming that, well, first, can you explain a little bit about what that is, and then two, would that be a result of like an imbalance in these breathing, like just always being on overdrive basically? Just get into that a little bit.
Mike Salemi: Could certainly be. The tonic system of the body is you could think of it like the postural system, right? There’s tonic muscles are postural muscles. Typically, they’re more endurance-based. They’re typically more type 1 muscle fibers, so slow twitch. Those are the muscles that are responsible for holding us up right for our postural component. You could think of it like the analogy. Like those are the nuts and the bolts on the car, right? Those are the stabilizers of the system.
Mike Salemi: The phasic system is the mover system. The phasic system is like our prime movers. The phasic system is like the motor of the car. What I’ve found through my personal experience, like I have a very strong motor. So coming from powerlifting, like my athletic profile is much more as a fast switch athlete, Olympic weightlifting, gymnastics, explosive movements. But you put me in a sport… Well, in kettlebell sport, it’s unique because you have to be very strong, but it’s a 10-minute unbroken set. So it’s more along the lines of endurance. 10 minutes, you’re in the endurance, you’re in that zone.
Mike Salemi: So it’s kind of a unique sport, but what I’ve found was the motor of my car is so much more developed and was so much more developed than the phasic system or the postural and the stabilizer systems that what was happening was in competition, I would be clean and jerking. Once I would get somewheres around three-ish minutes, all of a sudden, I’d be getting really, really shaky, and every successive rep after that essentially was getting sloppier and sloppier. The kettlebell was flying out. It was kind of roping back in. And I was using the smaller muscles of my forearms to do the work of my legs.
Mike Salemi: So I had such an imbalance between my postural muscles or my stabilizer muscles in comparison to the motor system, or the phasic system that as soon as my stabilizers were gassed out, I was asking my prime movers, the major muscles of the body to propel the weight, to do the job of moving the weight and stabilizing my structure, which they’re not designed to do, because phasic muscles are mover type muscles. Those are more fast twitch dominant, right?
Mike Salemi: So what I had to do with Paul, and he’s the one who identified it, was do a lot, a lot, a lot of postural reconditioning. So exercises, so longer duration. It’s not a fun type of training. It’s like the one that everyone hates, but that’s the corrective exercise in setting that base. Like for the first two months, like we barely lifted a kettlebell, really, really set up the ability for me to stay in the groove, because during longer sets.
Mike Salemi: Because one of the things, I always love watching the Olympics. I’m sure everyone listening does as well. But it’s like when you look at an elite athlete, it’s like whether it’s an Olympic weightlifting, or in any sport, it’s like the athlete that can make rep one look like rep 100 or the athlete that can make five kilos look like 200 kilos, or vice versa, I’m sorry, 200 kilos look like five kilos, who can use the same technique, the same or similar speed, have the movement almost look identical, that is the master. But if you’re breaking down at the end of your set, it’s like you’ve lost it.
Mike Salemi: So I was breaking down. So really conditioning that postural system was huge for me to balance out so that I could go longer durations. When you’re talking about the postural conditioning exercises, because you’re not really… like you could choose a, quote unquote, postural exercise, but if you’re only doing it for 10 seconds, you’re really not stimulating that side of the system. If I recall correctly, I think the threshold is three-ish minutes to really dip into that side, somewheres around there. It’s not quite two minutes. Maybe it’s 100 seconds, something like that, but it’s well over somewheres two minutes plus.
Mike Salemi: So two minutes of a continuous movement, or whatever the exercise is. Let’s just pick a simple exercise to recondition head and neck posture, like static wall lean. So a static wall lean, what you would do is you would stand back facing a wall, so you’d be looking away from a wall, standing back facing a wall. You’d be standing somewheres maybe six inches away from the wall, and you’d be leaning back. The only contact point between you and the wall would be the back of your head.
Mike Salemi: Essentially you’d be leaning back slightly trying to lengthen, lengthen your spine as much as possible, tucking the chin in. In that exercise, you would adjust the foot positioning to where you would only go as far away from the wall with your feet to where you are putting about a 40% effort with your head against the wall. So essentially what you’re doing is your body’s stiff as a board. The back of your head is against the wall. And all you’re doing is breathing and putting some light tension from the back and the wall. Essentially, you’re not only lengthening the back of the head and neck, but you’re truly strengthening all the deep cervical flexors in that position.
Mike Salemi: So when you do that, in the beginning maybe you do 10 second sets but ultimately you want to work to about two to three minutes plus, because you could do that exercise for just five seconds, and you might feel an activation. Maybe your head and neck position’s a little bit better, but the nervous system and the body, those tonic muscles, will not record that movement because it didn’t happen long enough, you didn’t condition the slow twitch muscle fibers.
Mike Salemi: So choosing a great postural exercise is good, but you want to make sure you’re really getting the stimulus that you want, and that truly takes a longer time under tension.
Joel Smith: I had to write down that three minutes, and I should circle it. I talk about this in a lot of my other podcasts. I think someone actually made a comment that they were going to make a drinking game every time I mentioned extreme isometrics. But like it’s basically a movement where you do like hold a isometric line, isometric push-up, hang from a bar. And the guy who really proliferate the system is like three minutes is the minimum for it to make an impact. It’s like so worlds are kind of colliding on me. It’s like that phasic-tonic balance. I mean athletes who do that stuff tend to get big-time performance gains, and just feel better, and have capacity, too. Like I’m sure with the work capacities improve once you balance those systems out. It’s cool stuff, man.
Joel Smith: I know we’re just about out of time. My last maybe question just for a couple minutes is to speak about full-circle here a little bit. I know ELDOA stretching. You tend to use that a little bit in your practice. Could you explain that and how you fit that in there?
Mike Salemi: Yeah. I do ELDOAs in everything that I do, principles of ELDOAs, but also with… no matter if I’m teaching a Bulgarian bag workshop, a kettlebell workshop, I’m working with teams, I always, always, always use ELDOAs. ELDOA is a French acronym for, if we translate the acronym to English, it stands for loads. Essentially it stands for longitudinal osteoarticular decoaptation stretching.
Joel Smith: That’s amazing you remember that.
Mike Salemi: I had to say it so many times that like it rolls off the tongue now. Essentially, it’s a system of stretching/strengthening exercises or postures that were developed by a French osteopath named Dr. Guy Voyer. Dr. Guy Voyer developed this system. He’s also a medical doctor, an orthopedic surgeon. He’s got a PhD in education, just super brilliant, brilliant guy.
Mike Salemi: The ELDOA postures are highly, highly, highly specific exercises. So there’s a specific ELDOA posture for almost every single articulation or joint in the body. The primary goal of an ELDOA is to increase the space in a particular joint, but to do so actively, and it utilizes the myofascial chains. So there’s a specific hand position, head position, eye position, foot position on every single posture to elicit a space opening effect. They’re also called decoaptation at L5-S1. There’s a different posture for T6-T7, different posture for C4-C5.
Mike Salemi: What’s so powerful about this technique or this tool is only takes a minute. One minute per posture is all you need, and when done consistently, the changes that you can experience are phenomenal. Like disc bulges, disc herniations, improved circulation, disc hydration, better joint mechanics, better body awareness, pumping. If there’s a nerve that goes through an area of the spine specifically that feeds an organ and a gland, so if there’s a compression there, you can really open that stuff up.
Mike Salemi: It’s been one of the most, if not the most best additions to the holistic type of training that I do. I mean, if you’re not sleeping well, if you’re not eating well, if you’re not balancing your energy working in and working out, if you’re not hydrated, those are the foundations of health that set up high-performance. Like by no means is an ELDOA a Band-Aid or anything for any of that. You still have to manage yourself well. But when you add in the ELDOA as either its own training practice, or at the end of a training session in just one to five minutes, the results are incredible.
Mike Salemi: Like it has extended my athletic career and my overall sense of well-being. It’s just been incredible. But then again, like I’m also eating well, sleeping well and doing those things. But when you use those and you use the ELDOA postures, I mean it’s just, it’s really incredible.
Joel Smith: That’s awesome, man. Another thing to add to the list of show notes, and all of the exercises and co-modalities and all the stuff I’ve learned from you today, but hey I know we’re out of time. But, Mike, thanks so much, man. This is, the work out, the talk, awesome experience. Thanks for being a guest, man.
Mike Salemi: No. I appreciate you. Thank you. Thank you. I’m so happy to meet you. Felt like we’ve finally made this happen.
Joel Smith: All right. That does it for another episode in the books of the Just Fly Performance Podcast. I loved getting outside the box on this show. I love being on the edge of the field. I love talking with all these coaches, athletes, and then practitioners who are really creating something special in our field along as to serve our athletes better, and allowing to not to serve our athletes in athletic performance, but also even just workout practice and habits in general.
Joel Smith: I think the working in stuff is awesome, and just like [inaudible 01:00:10] post-production, I have been integrating that with some athletes, and the feedback has been incredible. People love that we live in such a sympathetically overloaded space, and being able to do that type of thing is really cool.
Joel Smith: So if you enjoyed the show, leave us a rating, or if you could please, I really just totally appreciate it if you left us a rating in iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, PodBean. I don’t even know all these, but a rating or a review would be awesome. I would totally appreciate that. Our sponsor simplifaster.com, they rock. They’re awesome. They’ve been with us since virtually day one. So support them. I know people ask me about timing systems, I say Freelap Timing System without a second thought. They have that and many other awesome tools for athletic performance and data collection in their store.
Joel Smith: We’ll see you guys back next week with another great guest. We’ve had some awesome ones in the lineup recently. So looking forward to bring new more good information. Have a wonderful week, everybody.
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