[Transcript starts at 1:44]
Maestro: Hello, hello, hello, my podcast people and thank you for joining me for another episode of my favorite podcast today We have a special guest and if you're watching the video, no, this is not. Dr. Strange looks like it He's not for those you're listening. Maybe you've heard of the name Benedict Cumberbatch Not him, but maybe go watch YouTube so you can see cuz I was like Matt you are his twin But I have been I was grateful and lucky and privileged enough to have found him, I don't know, a few months ago, uh, after a master meeting.
And from there I was like, this guy is the real deal. Uh, y'all know if you've been listening that I play beach volleyball, not very tall, which means jumping is imperative. And I was trying to work on the bunnies, but I have been searching for a program that could actually help me with that. And I'm very discerning with this and along came.
Today's guest. He is a coach, a business owner, and he specializes in getting y'all to fly AKA plyometrics and the dynamic side of movement. He is the owner of Plus Plyos. Um, and that's a program that. Also provides education, which is to me a big differentiator and a big reason that underpins his success in the space.
And, dare I say it, it is the only specific plyometric program and education on the planet. So y'all know after I went through all the things and all the testing I had to bring him on and put him in front of you. In case you too want the bunnies. So, without further ado, welcome. To the show, my new friend, Matt McInnes, not McKynes, it kind of looks like McKynes, it's not.
It's McInnes Watson. Welcome, my guy.
Matt McInnes Watson: Well, thank you ever so much for having me on. It's a, it's a pleasure to be on here because I have been a fan of the show for far longer than we've, we've interacted. So, and I have used it. Like, I, I'll even look at an episode now and I really don't care what the, what the name of it is.
Like I'm, I'm just going to listen to it anyway, cause I know that I'm going to get something decent from it. So it means a lot to, to be on here and, and, and actually it's even more meaningful that, you know, you're using my programs and singing it's praises. We've, we've spoken multiple times about my belief in it and you kind of.
Yeah, vocalizing the same sort of thing, um, and seeing changes in what you're doing and how you're moving and stuff. So I thoroughly appreciate it.
Maestro: Thank you for real. It's, there's just so much stuff out there. And I can say like from the, if I put my physio hat on my PT hat on, like, it's just not something that we get a ton of education.
And we will tout ourselves as movement experts, but there are subsets of movements and different types of movement. And when it comes to the dynamic side of things, I know for sure, That it is lacking, and I know when I was treating, I would look to take people to a certain Certain level and then be like, all right, you have to go see someone else now.
Like my job is to get rid of pain. Let's get you back to at least what you were doing, but to get better at that specific thing, especially if we're looking at that more athletic population, you're going to need something else. I can get the introductory stuff. And actually you did a phenomenal post.
Maybe we'll start off with that. You did a phenomenal post the other day, uh, talking about like the triple hop test, and that's kind of the gold standard in PT I had an ACL tear and that was one of the things they're like, can you do this? And I was like, one, no, I can't. Uh, but is this going to carry over into sport?
And so just all the stuff you put out, I'm like, this guy knows his stuff. And you're just now a tremendous resource. So let's, let's back it up. Can you just tell us, let's give the folks some of your own background, just how you got into this, you got a great accent, where are you from, and then we'll go from there.
Matt McInnes Watson: So I am from, I'm from the UK. Um, I am from a place called Southampton, just South of London. And yeah, I, I grew up typical British boy, played football or soccer. Um, and yeah, I knew nothing. I knew nothing until I was probably 20 with regards to what jumping was and what plyometric was. Plyometrics were, sorry.
And I tried to play basketball at the age of 16, 17. Realized that, well, there's a lot of skill involved in basketball. You can't just, you know, just magically change your perception of being able to control a ball with your feet and now with your hands. It's quite, quite a lot of skill development based there.
So, but I quickly realized that I was more on the athletic side than I was on the skill side. So I did some dirty work in basketball for a couple of years, grabbing rebounds, you know, trying to, trying to be athletic on the court and intimidate a few people, but. ultimately that led me to being told I should try track and field.
So I was taken along to, so in, in the UK we have, instead of high school going to 18, we go to 16. And then for 17, 18, sometimes 19 year olds, we have a middle part called sixth form college. And we call that college and then we go to university. So in those years of college, 60, between 16 and 19, I I was kind of you're supported by your kind of sports department in large and you're kind of taken to different sports events and stuff as if you're competing for your high school.
And I was kind of pushed to do some track and field. I'd never high jumped, maybe once before when I was in high school, but my best friend was going to national championships in high jump super talented guy. Um, But actually ended up being a pro soccer player. So, which was, which is interesting. Um, so he stopped high jumping at like the age of like 16, 17.
And then it was my kind of turn then to be like, Oh, okay, maybe I will try high jump. And I think the first day I tried high jump, I, I scissor kicked over six foot. So it was like, Oh, okay, you can high jump. So I walked, I was walked down to my local track. And I met who has now been my mentor in coaching and really all things life, Eric.
Um, for the last 15 years. So yeah, I just happened to fall upon a coach that had coached Olympians, Commonwealth games, medalists had worked in multiple different sports, had a big background in psychology, um, and counseling support and his background in the jumps world of plyometrics and jump training was huge.
So that kind of kind of fell onto me. Like I, I liked the weight room, but I fell in love with. the jumps work that we were doing alongside just normal high jumping. So your standard, your standard kind of specific high jumping work away from that, but we were doing hopping, bounding, jumping, leaping, whatever you want to call it.
That's where I kind of fell in love with it. Like I romanticize about like a, like a kind of end of summer kind of UK where the sun is still up quite late. It's, you know, it starts to, you know, it's starting to turn a little bit autumny. But we're out there doing loads of hard work after we'd had time off and like that, that to me is, you know, just getting back into those feelings of doing hundreds of different plyometric movements and just feeling.
Yeah, that's if I could go back to any time in my life. It's that sort of time period. Um, so yeah and Had an okay career as a high jumper and was a low level international high jumper That was kind of it was kind of stumped by by Eric falling ill and he stepped away from track and field Just because it's just so cold in the UK trying to get out the whole of the winter.
We had no indoor facility Um, so yeah, so I was, yeah, so, so I, to do technical high jump work, we didn't do any from October to March. So we did, like, we were the guys that did lots more plyometrics and jumping based work. So again, that's also how it influences me. Um, we were kind of like the lower level version of how plyometrics were invented.
And plyometrics were invented out of people in Siberia and Russia trying to come up with training. Modalities because they couldn't specifically do their sport because it's cold. It's minus 30 outside. You can't go outside and train. So we're working in a little shed. That's just chuck people off of boxes and they'll get these crazy adaptations and, and learn, learn a lot.
So that was kind of our version, just to a little bit less of that degree, not quite as hard nose, but we had to, we, yeah, we had to find a way to get working. So, um, You know, in, I'd say in the peaks of my career, Eric kind of stepped away. There was no other coaches really around the area. And I wasn't willing to necessarily move at that time.
So I became coach and athlete. I was the eldest in a group of very talented jumpers. We had three age group, national champions in the high jump. We had international like youth, heptathletes and multi eventers. The group was phenomenal and all, all dues to Eric in, in the, you know, his quality of coaching and stuff.
So. It was like, okay, Matt. So you're now the coach. So, so I, you know, I got support from Eric from afar and yeah, and used a lot of his systems and try to learn more and more as I went along. Um, yeah. And ended up kind of supporting those athletes into more. adulthood, um, stages of their athletic careers and stuff.
So, yeah. And I think to, to the naivety of, of how young I was as a coach, um, I'd like to think that I did a reasonable job with those guys. Um, yeah. And track and field is per se, my kind of expertise in a specific sport if I was to choose it. Um, yeah. And that kind of led to me. figuring out what I wanted to do with a career.
Um, because I really didn't know what I wanted to do because I, I fell into teaching, um, which I didn't plan to do. Um, and that's just come from my, my coaching. So I was, I was in the UK coaching 25, 30 hours a week and teaching 40 hours a week. Um, and we decided that it was just too much. So I stepped away from that and we moved to the Middle East.
We lived in the Middle East for a few years, so I could, so I could teach and have more time with my wife basically, but in doing so COVID hit and that's the birth of our business Plus Flyers. So, you know, I was always feeding on, you know, figuring out things and coaching people from afar and helping people out, trying to push as much as my work.
So I did, I did PhD, but kind of pulled away from that when our business started to grow significantly. So. Yeah, it's been a kind of balancing act of figuring out how I have now got to this like, per se, quote unquote, specialist in the area. But it's kind of fit really organically, I think. Sounds like it.
Because it's not like I've gone out and chosen to be like, the Playo guy, but it's, Something that I'm massively passionate about and have found out very quickly that no one really has a clue what they're doing. So, you know, where you find a spot, you, you push, right?
Maestro: When you were starting out and then as you continue to learn, were there things that, so you started off with Eric and it sounds like you were incredibly fortunate that like his tutelage was sound.
Were there things that you had to unlearn or how did you sift through What was out there and what was traditionally being done? And you're like, actually, we're going to go this route. Was it trial and error or what did that?
Matt McInnes Watson: Yeah. I've had this discussion with someone else before, actually, that there's a hell of a lot going on in the, in the, the online Instagram S and C coach vibe.
The, some of these people that have never coached anyone to try now to coach people and they're talking in certain language and they're saying certain things and you're like that it's all well and good how you're saying that, but actually the context in which you're saying it or the effect that it has.
To a larger audience or the individuals that you might actually be targeting which could be completely wrong is based on I learned something at a big educational conference that I went to in the uk And that was in It was in like this thing where he kind of put out to everyone like is anyone trying to use maths now again and later?
Later like adulthood like and i'm digging back into like biomechanical research And he said one of the reasons why you're struggling now at this point Is because you may have missed out basic mastery in those first instances When you were learning at school and that was me between the ages of 14 and 15 16 I became the class clown and I wasn't I just wasn't stimulated by what was going on in the classroom.
So I missed huge blocks of work where I just wasn't paying attention for you know, six to eight week blocks. I was just Yes Getting by i've got okay grades, but actually I didn't understand the the mastery of basics. I didn't understand, like, you need to understand basic algebra for that to become a larger part of something, you know.
So, yes, I see, I saw that a lot in myself, in that I came in with a, with a level of knowledge and certain things that were pretty high. But actually I had to backtrack into certain directions and go well, I really don't know anything about that I don't understand why we're at this stage So I had to find my way back and you and I constantly ebbed back and forward and actually what?
where you can draw a lot of beauty in that is Is that all of us actually need to continually go back to the basics to understand things at large a deeper level And I I now use that as a way to teach You In educational settings in that I always say to people bear with me on where we're going to start here Because you might think oh, come on that like this is basic stuff We all know this stuff and actually we always go back to well Then why do you all have different opinions on this same topic?
It's because some of you learn it or didn't learn it, or, you know, missed certain stages in that learning development. So it's, it's really highlighted to me that a baseline level of mastery and getting that stuff done to a T makes you stand out as an individual and you. You can never go wrong with teaching basic things really effectively.
You can be the best of the best in this like top 1 percent of people, but actually you're going to get a hell of a lot more, you know, you can use the word engagement, and that could be engagement online, it could be just resonating with someone that you're talking to there and then. But if you understand the basics tremendously, you will, you'll never fail, in my opinion.
Maestro: You folks listening, you already see now why I love this guy. This is, it's life lessons applies to everything but it's It's really, uh, what's the word, encouraging to hear you saying this about something that may feel foreign to other people. When you said that you had to kind of go back and you're kind of yo yoing and you're going to the ebb and flow and going back and forth and back and relearning things and, and, yeah.
Trying to gain that mastery of the foundations. What were you, where were you finding the information? Where are you going to, to find that information? So
Matt McInnes Watson: it's funny. I'm not, I'm not like traditionally trained in, I'm not, I don't have an accreditation in strength conditioning. Um, I've learned from a lot of very good coaches as well because of Eric's network.
And that's been a huge learning curve from that now, alongside, alongside having Eric as my. Specialist high jump coach. I also had another mentor at my university. So I've been high jumping for one year. And then when I started university. The university was, they had a great strength and conditioning coach that was just kind of working with a few athletes, but he wanted to create what was classed as like a high performance academy of athletes where you would get, you know, it doesn't exist as to how it exists in the U S but you would get PT, you would get kind of any recovery strategy.
You would get S and C support. They would help with feeding you and making sure you were getting, you know, the best support possible. It didn't exist. The first year. I became part of like two or three guys that started this performance academy. And James, his name was, he was probably in his early thirties.
So again, learning a lot himself, but he became the, the stat, like the, what's the phrase, the, the typical kind of fitness and strength conditioning side of the support of it. So he, he enabled me to create more of a lens whilst I was learning within university as well, but he, He gave me that lens of understanding muscle adaptations on like a simple cellular level through to getting someone to be strong, you know, more powerful, better cardiovascular, um, health, whatever it might be with regards to kind of training methods in, in exercise science.
Um, and then in like a gym setting and stuff, and he helped me understand. you know, what we should be tracking, how, how we should structure sessions, and just, you know, things that sometimes you're not going to get in education anyway. Um, but massively what, what I gained from it was understanding actually some of the stuff I was also learning at university.
didn't really help me in a situation where I had 15 athletes in front of me and I had to organize a session in a certain way that could facilitate it. And then he'd say to me, Oh, I want you to take these guys for a plyometric session because he, he saw my knowledge straight away and understanding how to teach it.
And he would straight out say to me, your knowledge is far better than I am at seeing and teaching this stuff. Then I get into a setting and he's like, cool. So you've only got 10 yards of space to do this in. And I'm like, Oh, and it's just, you know, basic, basic stuff. So yeah, I had the two sides of it. I had Eric with the technical stuff and actually Eric stepped into my life into a really, really big standout point where my, my father started to become really ill.
So he kind of stepped in as a big father figure. Um, and I, I talk about Eric and the way that he questioned me as a, as a person and I always say this to people about him being my mentor. He's someone that I'd had an email chain for 13 years with him, constantly going back and forth with, here's this idea.
What do you think of this? I've been looking at this. And we constantly talk about what we're currently learning. Questions as to what you think as to my ideas are and it's funny But I I think I grew up in a with a childhood of I kind of skated and danced by a lot of educational stuff. Like I I didn't really care about my grades what I wanted to do was be with my friends I wanted to have fun and Yeah, I was like I avoided a lot.
I avoided a lot of seriousness um And then he entered my life and he I think he was the first person that made me think and like and it's a very very like just kind of grand word to say to think but i'd never Never thought and sat down and think like i've never found passion in something where I was like, wow And it just takes someone to give you that spark and ignite the way that you then start to see Everything and like i'd say i'd say to my friends all the time like they You They don't want to think on a deeper level.
They're just happy to do as they are. Um, and yeah, sometimes it's, yeah. Yeah. Sometimes it's, When
Maestro: you're, when you have a podcast, like you never know when you're with someone on like what direction the podcast is going to go, you have some ideas, things you want to talk about, but you never know for sure.
And it's the best when you're just like, look where we are. I love this. That last sentence you said, or a few sentences ago, when I thought you were gonna say another word. And you're like, he taught me to, Asked me to think, and I was like about, and you're like, no, just period, think period. And seeing this to me, so much of people's success, it leaves clues and it's not like your success.
It's not a fluke. And if we kind of like look at things retrospectively, it makes so much sense that your non traditional education was such a big part of things, which is why now you're getting non traditional outcomes. Thanks. Right. I'm glad that you weren't like, I referenced the NSCA book. And I'd be like, well, that's what you referenced.
Like, and you're like, no, like I had these two mentors that were amazing and they're, you know, things they were teaching me based and rooted in success and successful outcomes. And the things that they were doing with the knowledge that they had acquired, but then also all the work they had done was done with all of these athletes and learning from that.
This makes so much sense. And I can see it in your posts. I can see it in your content and exactly what we're tying in, what you just said with Eric. The thought that's there where you take a moment and you actually think deeper about these things where so much, if we just think about like any singular example, we think about movement where people will just accept the thing as is I went to school.
And especially if you're the person that was like, I did well in school way, because I know how to take a test and I know how to like pay attention to this stuff, even if I don't fucking care about it, so they'll just regurgitate that and never take a moment to be like, but wait a minute. Why? Not to like question it in like a dick capacity, but just be like, but does that make sense?
Like it was. Wait a minute, especially if you are, uh, working with things in real time and being like, but this is what I'm hearing, reading, like, it doesn't actually make sense with what I'm seeing and like how to put these things together. All of this that you're saying, I'm just like, yes, as I, folks, you listening, this is my first time digging into Matt's history.
I don't know. So I'm like, yes, all of this makes so much sense.
Matt McInnes Watson: And when, when you have someone that looks and thinks outside of, I don't know, status quo, I don't know if it's an egotistical way to say it, but I think, It has to go back to having a baseline mastery in something you gotta, you gotta know it on a fundamental level.
You, you can't skim past, and there's actually so much that I've been thinking about lately. I've been thinking about becoming, the reflex guy and understanding the human body's reflexes and how that relates to movement because there's no one that's putting it into like the dynamic sports training field and we have a lot of people saying a lot of terms that would relate to that field.
People talk about all the time they talk about the words like stiffness, they talk about the words like to or stiffness and elasticity, the two most used terms when it comes to jumping and the two most um, improperly prescribed words possible. So, and again we use, we use terms that come from a different world.
We, they come from like a physics world and then we try and relate it back to tissue. And, but no one questions it. They're like, Oh, it seems right. You want to be as stiff as possible when you do X, Y and Z. I'm like, well, there's a lot more that happens on a biological level that wouldn't require you because you are not made of steel.
So you're made of hundreds of different joints that interact simultaneously and have all these different. So like, so yeah, going back to the point in that, We're happy just to say, Oh, that person used that term and it could be subconsciously. So we just regurgitate it and we're all guilty of it. We are all guilty.
I'm guilty with it. With so many things that I say and do in your line of work, if you don't question why we're, you know, when people say stiffness, what does that mean? What does it mean to be stiff? And then I look at loads of people use the phrase and they say, Oh, I'm using stiff, let's say pogo leaps. I
Maestro: knew it.
Matt McInnes Watson: And then I watched someone do it. And then I'm like, that's stiff. Great. But you're not going anywhere. You're not achieving what you want to achieve. That's going to have that transfer into sport. That's going to have the transfer into whatever it might be in your daily life. So it goes back to mastery always goes back to mastery.
You can't think about something in a certain depth or level without knowing the basics to the nth degree. And the basics will teach you constantly about what you assume to be high level forms of thinking. You talk about it all the time. Do the thing. Get better at the thing and what you're doing so that you can eventually get to a stage where I can now analyze it.
You can't post once a week on Instagram and then try and find information from that. That doesn't make sense. There is not enough data points. There's not enough learned situations to be taken from that, right? You, you can't. You're not creating patterns. You're not creating a print of something and saying, you know, but that print just doesn't work.
I have to figure out how, so. Yeah,
Maestro: Matt. I want you to nerd out for a second. This is, this is, I haven't done a lot of guest episodes recently. Um, and I haven't done like a crossover to my past life and bringing the movement side, but I'm like, I will forever be the movement maestro. And that is the heart of what I do.
And I'm like, I love this stuff as well. Can you, will you, Honor us with a, some nerding out about stiffness and elasticity. I actually had a big circle on my board right here about Pogos, but we can start off with stiffness and, and elasticity and your thoughts around that.
Matt McInnes Watson: Yeah. I know it's broad. Yeah. So stiffness is stiffness is a really.
Like I said before, it's a really overused term. And obviously it makes a lot of sense when you are trying to, we are, we humans are built in a way to locomote really effectively. And what I mean by locomote is, you know, take yourself into a, into a forest in Europe, back in, you know, A million years ago, and you are ambling through the woods foraging and you're bouncing from rock to rock, you know, jumping over a small stream, running down and met whatever it might be, but you are constantly utilizing energy as effectively as possible.
So when you. When you flex a little bit at the knee or you flex a little bit at the hip We will understand how much harder life becomes to us because we like to be in a stiffer taller position We don't like to bend the knee too much We don't like to sink into the hip too much because we know that it puts a lot of strain on those tissues So inherently the word stiffness makes sense now when we talk about stiffness stiffness is often talked about in a one dimensional aspect in that we use training methods like plyometrics to you promote tissue to improve their stiffness, their stiffness qualities.
So we look to improve the stiffness of a muscle, um, and how it reacts to force. We look to improve the stiffness of a tendon. So we look to build the cross sectional area of it, or the thickness of a tendon, um, and that ultimately kind of It's like going from let's say an inch thick steel cable to let's say two inches, you know, it's gonna, it's gonna have a little bit more stiffness to it.
Makes sense. Okay. But, but, but, but, but, but there are so many other components to movement. So on a subconscious level, we are phenomenal. Animals to be moving on two feet. I don't think, I don't think people understand how much of a skill it is to, we're not just moving, we're sorry, we're not moving on two feet.
We're moving on one foot. But we have two feet to do that. So it's a, we are bipedal animals. Now to do that, it requires proprioceptive ability. It requires us to know where we are in space. It requires us to anticipate what's about to happen. So I talk about this all the time. When you jump or leap or bound over a puddle.
How do you anticipate the ground on the other, on the other side? The likelihood is that you're not gonna slam your foot into the ground. You're gonna be like, tentative, reach the toe out. That's anticipation. We have that built into us. We don't think about it. We think about, oh, there's a puddle. But then we jump and then we anticipate.
So anticipation is a huge component of movement. We, we have that built into us subconsciously. And the best movers in the world, They anticipate the ground so highly that if if you were to test someone in how much they can Voluntary voluntarily contract a muscle. I think the best jumpers in the world can reach up to 80 percent of that marker Whilst they are in the air so they are firing their body Before they strike the ground to create stiffness So when we can anticipate the floor effectively when we can activate all those muscles effectively And when we can get all of those things to sing at the same time And to figure that out in a skill acquisition point of view So we're sending signals from the brain down that down that freeway junction to the the toe that's going to hit the ground first has to happen in in in the correct like immediate timing because Every single person that's listening to this podcast will know the time where they put their foot into the ground and they mistimed it Completely and they're like, holy shit.
What happened there? Right. You try and change direction. You just miss it. And you're like, Oh, my, um, you know, I'm sat in the bottom of this movement thinking I cannot get out of this. And I'm trying. I'm trying. I'm trying the best movement and flow and kind of fluidity of movement comes from well timed, you know, fluid movement.
It comes from you anticipating. Well, it comes from you pre activating. Well, so That is stiffness on the two sides of it. You have the physical development side of it and you have the skill of how you create stiffness. You can have all the stiffest tendons in the world. Your Achilles can be really stiff.
Great. But if you can't time it, it doesn't mean anything. So that's stiffness. That's stiffness. We have to have those timed effective components to it and those skill acquisition sides to it because we are a multi joint person thing. You stick a pole in the ground, it doesn't have those things, so it just reacts to whatever it is.
So, um, so yeah, that's stiffness. Now, elasticity is taking tissue through maybe a range of motion and then it coming back to original form. That is the phrase that it's kind of a phrase that you would be similar in physics. So stiffness is probably about getting at, you know, as minimal deformation as possible.
So as little bend as possible to give us that electric kind of snap into the air. But elasticity is actually the other end of it. And it's actually being able to take that tissue into those deep ranges. and then get out of it. And so you're going to go into flexion and then into extension of a certain joint, but it's going to do that again in that flowed motion.
Now, this takes a little bit of a different way of attacking it and it takes deeper ranges of motion. It takes often, it's actually, elasticity is built into a lot of movements that we assume are going to be more stiffer. So, we have this fine balancing act where people say, oh yeah, we're trying to, trying to improve stiffness and elasticity.
And I'm like, Well, which one dude? It's like saying, yeah, we're lift, we're doing heavy back squats at the moment and we're trying to improve max strength and cardiovascular endurance. And you're like, I don't know if we're talking the same, you know, so like, but you do, you do also have to understand that there's a little bit of elasticity in everything that we do because we are human beings and we have.
active tissue. So the beauty of looking at elastic movement because our tissue is so malleable in the way that it moves, you know, you can move the belly of a muscle. You can stretch a tendon. Obviously it's a lot of a stiffer property tissue. So if you look at it as well on a movement scale, the stiffer the movement becomes, the more likely you are to use more of the tendon.
The more time you spend on the ground, the more likely you are to. Kind of kill off that tendon and say, we don't need you right now because we're taking you through that a little bit more of a deeper range. Now that's also determined on. If the force is too much, you will say, no, thank you, ma'am. I'm going to take you through a much deeper range of motion because your attendant is not going to give, give back what you think is going to go back.
Or you have the choice in that and you are just taking yourself through those deeper ranges. And you, you know what that's like with the deep test stuff that we do with the program. So those are the two ends of the, they're not two ends of the spectrum, but that just the flip side of that card sort of thing.
I was actually going to ask,
Maestro: like, would you consider it to be, uh, These to be on a single spectrum or because if we're thinking about movements and we'll get into the way that you program and why you program that way, um, can you elaborate? You're starting to say, can you elaborate if this is, is this a spectrum and then we're looking to trend towards one, one, one, the other, or they're just two things that exist.
They coexist and we should be thinking about both.
Matt McInnes Watson: Yeah, it's more coexistence and maybe, maybe more of an X and Y axis that it would be like. Okay. It would be like super fast and highly dynamic stuff in the right top corner. And it would be like slower, deeper range stuff in the opposite corner. And then on the right side, it would be maybe fast, but deeper range movement.
So it could be like accelerating. Like you're just in a deeper range of motion, but we're still trying to do it pretty fast. And then you could have, yeah, you have the flip opposite in the top left corner. So it could be more of that kind of access, but it's more coexistence. Um, because they are different in the way that they, yeah, the way that they're talked about within a, within a physics realm.
So again, like I said before, it's hard to bring. It's always hard to bring the biomechanics world into, like, the human world.
Maestro: Yes, and I think that the kind of example you gave of I think that for the physiotherapist listening to this, notice he never used the word rigid, which is what I would think about if we said, uh, we sound like a rigid foot, but if you talk about like a pole, you're like, it's rigid to me when we start talking about and using ideally, we're using words like stiffness and elasticity and we're applying it to a human.
We're applying it to a dynamic system, a biologically alive living system. And so there's always, there's an extent of, of, of life and movement to it. And it, we're. So I love that you didn't put it on two ends of the same spectrum because to me it would actually be like the opposite would be like rigid.
It doesn't move and it's like inert and dead. So that's not what we're talking about.
Matt McInnes Watson: Exactly. Can't apply that. Exactly. I'd love to. Yeah, you're bouncing rocks rather than like malleable tissue, right? Bouncing rocks. Yeah.
Maestro: Although sometimes I see people run and I'm like, you're bouncing rocks. You are bouncing rocks, you're
Matt McInnes Watson: either bouncing rocks or running in sand, right?
You got like those two.
Maestro: So let's keep, let's stay with this then. Um, I love that the explanation you gave us the X and Y axis. Let's stay with this. And can you speak about your, the way that your brain works and how you've categorized things such that this is how you are. looking like, how do you come up with your categories for programming?
Matt McInnes Watson: Yeah. So, so that actually initially comes from Eric's work. Um, and I'll, I will say that until the cows come home sort of thing. Um, it, it is fundamentally what Eric inherited from his mentors in the seventies from Hungary. Um, so yeah, it's, uh, it's steeped in a lot of history. Now, I, I would say that I have tried to.
Systematize it like exponentially now and I've really like his would have been a bit more fluid in the way that you could kind of, and you can, of course, and I always do in an individual setting. But if we're talking about in a larger scale of people that aren't necessarily hearing me in the now and then and they, you know, they're going to a program that that is already built and stuff.
So. It, it comes wholeheartedly from just being not happy enough with how plyometrics are kind of categorized. You've got like intense versus extensive, and people were like, intensive movement is like 95 percent and above, and then you're like, extensive movement is 95 percent and below. So people are like, Oh, I'm doing extensive bounding.
Right. And you're like, Your extensive bounding in comparison to someone else extent, someone else's extensive bounding is very different. So you have to, that's where the categorization comes in. So we have like super rudimentary stuff at the bottom, which is called light movement and light as in you're just light on your feet.
Pretty simple. We keep it fast, but we keep it very rudimentary. And then we have medium, something in the middle, submaximal movement where we're still moving with a bit of speed. But it's still in a way that you can see my cheeks jiggling around. I could talk to you if I wanted to. Um, Then we have what we class as ping tier, which is you are sending it.
It is intense. It is as dynamic as you possibly can be. And then we have a subcategory which is called the deep tier. And the deep tier is not per se plyometric in its, in, in, in the term of plyometrics itself being based on ground contact time and how long you spend on the floor for you to get a, like I mentioned before, if you to get more response out of the tendon, which is heavily Where plyometrics is, you would, it would need to be fast, it would need to be under an inverted commas 0.
25 of a second. If it's 2. 6, it's apparently not plyometric. It could be, but, um, yeah, deeps here is much longer. It's you're on the floor for like half a second, but you still have the landing and the takeoff component to it. But you're taking that athlete through much longer, deeper ranges of motion. And I'm starting to find that people never knew what that was.
And I'd been doing it for 15 years and Eric had been doing it since 1974. And People, they're just not used it. We don't do it because it, people are blown. Don't do it away by it. . We don't
Maestro: do it. Exactly for what you said that like even if you've never read a book and you don't know any numbers, you just think tric.
You think jumping. You don't think jumping and like being on the ground or spending time in deep motion aside from just attenuating the force. That's it. There's no like, I'm going be in this deeper position and I'm going to. Perform these movements in that position. It's just not, it's just not thought of and taught.
And I think also part of that comes from, you know, people's understanding of our understanding of the SAG principle. And we're like, well, I don't play like that, even though I am in those positions, but I don't like spend all this time in that position. So I shouldn't be training there. And so we don't.
And then here comes Matt. And
Matt McInnes Watson: who'd have thought, who'd have thought this, by the way, the PT world is kind of like, where is this training modality and where has it been all of my life of being a PT? So it is becoming the, the godsend for ACL and Achilles rehab. Yes. Achilles Achilles being I'm getting landings in by offloading the Achilles because it's not crazy dynamic fast and then the ACL stuff is just building stability through deeper ranges through longer time spent on the ground because again going back to that triple hop conversation right I've seen so many people that have returned from an ACL surgery that will just like skitter through those three hops it looked So terrible.
And then the physio is like, yep, cool. Tick you're through. You can go back to playing. And then you see, you see them then plant their leg and try and cut and change direction, playing soccer and they fall apart or it's not that they get injured. It's. They are just sat in that position for a month, and the other players are just going straight by them.
And you're like, that's because you haven't prepared them in those ranges of motion. You haven't created force in those ranges of motion. So it's slowly becoming the strength side of dynamic movement. That's what it feels like.
Maestro: In doing it, and having really fallen in love with that tier. That's what it feels like.
And I will say that part of me, it's like my knees have just always, I feel like in my whole life, they just always hurt. I've kind of accepted that. And it's just like, how much and how much is it going to limit me? What can I do? What can't I do? And like, they're, I'm very happy with where I'm at with these, but I think part of it is that I would assume that those things would hurt, but because like you said, we were not going into it so fast and loading so quickly that you're like, I actually.
It doesn't, but you just look at it and you're kind of like, Hmm, that's going to hurt me. And it's just been my experience. And you can speak to the other athletes. It's the complete opposite. I'm like, this is actually the most helpful thing.
Matt McInnes Watson: It's really therapeutic. It is. It is. There's a, there's a big thing to be said.
And the, The very, very salesy vibe of selling like the sexy side of like power, explosive, dynamic work, all these words that come with, with being a coach in the online space. Therapeutic doesn't sell very well, but I get a lot of people that come back to me when, when they've bought into this system and they're like, I can't believe how good I feel doing deep tear movements.
And I'm like, This is not, it's really good to, you know, it's not necessarily the best testimonial, but it like, for me, it speaks massively. I don't really care about testimonials. I care about what you're telling me when we have a conversation about
Maestro: it, you know,
Matt McInnes Watson: so
Maestro: hands down, just a game changer, Matt. I think that part of it speaking to speaking again, I'm going to talk about myself, but I am in a type of athlete that I don't handle high load.
Or high volume very well, like I've, I've gone through it. I've gone through, uh, you know, going through CrossFit. I'm not built for CrossFit by any means, but like, I know that super high volume, especially under significant load will break me down, even lower volume. But if it's high load, it will break me down.
So when you're saying these words, like, and this is what's taking me so long to dive into someone's biometric program. Cause I can look at it and just be like, that's going to hurt
Matt McInnes Watson: me. It's going to hurt me.
Maestro: These, these drops and like max effort and like being really powerful. I'm like, that means they have to generate a lot of force or attenuate a lot of force.
And that's going to break me down. I know it. And so I think if we sit and we kind of goes back to the earlier conversations, we sit and we think, and we're like, this makes so much sense from my physics perspective, why this will be, and can be therapeutic. Like it just, I talk about, uh, And she's actually probably going to start your program.
One of my good friends, Anna Hartman, she's movement rev on Instagram, folks. I brought her on, talked about her, we'll link her. But one of the things that's at the heart of her approach is anatomy, right? We can't, like, argue with anatomy and the basic physics of these things. And if we take a moment to go back and this ties into what Matt was saying earlier, going back, mastering the foundations.
What are the physics here? What is the math that's going on here? What's the anatomy that's going on here? And suddenly you're like, holy shit, what this man is saying, it objectively makes so much sense. So much sense.
Matt McInnes Watson: Yeah. And it, like going back to the deep tier stuff and, and the sensations that you're getting from it and just feeling good in that.
I, I've tried to create a lot of things that, so like we use oscillations in the deep tier where we don't quite get out of the movement, we kind of just sit there and bounce in there. And I try to do the same maybe in some of the light tier movements where we're trying to get high repetition. We're also trying to build trust in someone.
So I've like tried to find a lot of ways for someone to be like, I'm okay here.
Maestro: Okay, I'm
Matt McInnes Watson: just gonna I'm just gonna build like a bank of like it's like tick tick tick every time I land It's like building up that confidence bank and trust and I felt I just feel like that Like you say there's a hell of a lot of people out there that doesn't even matter if they're not necessarily Right now, per se, injured, but they've had that traumatic background and I could speak to 99 percent of basketball players that have a knee that's pissed off, has been pissed off.
So, to try to sell someone into a system, you know, shows them all of these fancy explosive movements has always been a really difficult sell. Um, and, I think it in anything that you do, if you can find a way to build trust, you know, it has, it has a massive sell off for you. Um, and I, and I find that people within our ecosystem do that.
They, you know, sometimes it might be hard to get someone into the ecosystem, but once you get them, You can hold on, you can hold on and you've got that trust and they, they then start to see the longer picture of being like, holy shit, I just couldn't move. Like you say, I was rigid. I had inhibition in me that creates rigidity.
You have someone, you speak to physiotherapists all the time and work with someone that's got like a real rigid foot that won't move and be elastic. Yes. And ultimately, like, for me, it's getting people into my system so that they can spend time in figuring out that oh shit, my hips were just terrible. I just didn't want to receive force because X, Y, and Z.
So, trust is big. Trust is big. It is. As
Maestro: we talk about it on, it's just, trust is big. I love this stuff. And I love that I've been able to experience it firsthand. And it just, there's just so many things clicking and going off in my head. And you said, if you're a physio physical therapist, listen to this is when a mass at oscillations, you should be thinking about kind of what was a grade one mobilizations.
It's one of the things we do when someone has pain is these very small, just gentle oscillations communicate with the nervous system. It's like a pain modulator. And I'm like, you're doing this, but with, Movement. When Matt's talking about building trust with the nervous system, we know the nervous system is queen.
She's not going to give you some to feel safe. She ain't giving it to you. And then in my mind, we start actually going towards that. Like you said, rigidity side where earlier I was like, a pole is rigid. Something that's like inert tissue is rigid. Something that's dead rigor mortis. You see that that is rigid.
And what starts to happen if you don't have that trust and safety, your nervous system says, hell no. And we start to lose that dynamic, that dynamic, um, component of. our movement of our body, where we just go into straight up, I'm trying to be safe and I'm rigid as fuck here and my movement's going to come from all these other areas and then start to be really cranky and really unhappy.
And no, like this program that I'm seeing that's like, jump off of this thing and do the crazy stuff and be so powerful. You're like, that might not be what I need, right?
Matt McInnes Watson: Yeah. And the, the inhibition creates that like performance ceiling to what you want to get. So, so you use the phrase like fight or flight now it's you live in fight.
Which won't get you to flight, like you, you fight with inhibition all the time, right? You're like, I know that it's going to be bad. Like I spoke about, I spoke about like subconscious patterns of like pre anticipation and activating the body well before you hit the ground. Now this inhibition is conscious activation, which you don't want.
You're Which is like, I'm freezing up, really, I'm trying to make sure that when I land, I'm just gonna, oop, on the ground. If you're watching, that would have been far more, um, it would have painted a lot more of a picture.
But you get, you get that vibe, right? You get it. You just understand, like, what would it be like for you to step out of a, you know, first story window? Like, what? What would you have in terms of that inhibition and it would be to be like You know, I, I go back to this a lot, but have you ever heard of a friend that got so drunk that they fell over really badly and came out of it without any form of break?
It's because they have no inhibition. They go loosey goosey. They become, they become like, you know, one with like the flow of just like a sack of water and they just fall down a flight of stairs and they're like, Oh, get up and run off. And you're like, what? It's because they didn't tense up. When you tense up, you hurt self.
Because I mean, ultimately it's not good if you're, if you want to be drunk and fall down a flight of stairs because you're not protecting your vital organs. So if you hit your head, it's over, but like the idea of inhibition is to protect vital organs. So using the oscillations is huge. It
Maestro: all makes so, so, so much sense.
And I love the words you were using earlier about fluidity. And if we think about rhythm, I mean, you think about someone that's just like a flow, right? And they just own that movement. And we see, we understand if you've ever, any of you have ever like really, you know, there's a deep dive into. Into movement, motion.
You understand the timing aspect of things and why someone that has rhythm versus doesn't have them, like why it looks like this and why you're like, Oh, that to me, it looks better than, than this other thing. Right. And how we were able to, um, like Matt is saying, we're for consciously timing things and we're actively being like, I need you to do this and this and this, we see that jerky movement.
Like that's, we've lost that flow. Right. Um, it was an example I was going to give, like, we know as well with, Kind of the safety component of, um, going loosey goosey. This is why crash test summaries initially weren't great because you're like, if you're drunk, a drunk driver tends to be okay, but like a person that's not, they're like, Oh shit.
And they get everything tight. And you're just like, yes, we see this folks, again, my physios and physical therapists and such that are in the, uh, the crowd here, we see this when people have low back pain, right? What we're thinking about and talking about is the appropriate level of stiffness. Right? And the appropriate timing of things.
People come in and they have back pain. They're incredibly stiff already. They're over bracing. They're just like, because they think that this thing is coming, right? From back in my movement days and when I was teaching my class, like one of the things we looked at to implement was this kind of rotational movement, just to work on sequencing of things so that we have that appropriate timing.
All right. We just don't want this massive overbracing for everything. And we, Matt has introduced us to this and talks about this. And this is where I want to segue, uh, because education on all of this, as it relates to these dynamic movements. So we all inherently, I don't want to say we all, but if you're in this space, you inherently understand this.
And to me, that's why this learning from him and utilizing the program. I'm just like, this makes so much. So, so, so, so, so much sense. So Matt, as the segue, can you speak about, cause you're huge with education inside of the platform, unlike this man is giving away dissertation here. Can you speak about. just the type of education that you provide, whether it's, um, in the program, um, just in general, like on your socials and kind of just, I'm going to put a broad question out there and then we can
Matt McInnes Watson: narrow it in.
Yeah. So, so I have, I do have, um, a, a course, which is an introduction to plyometrics, um, and that, that is like basic science, basic application, basic programming, and basic testing. But it gives you. It goes back to the mastery. It has a sole focus on what we're trying to achieve and why we're trying to achieve those outcomes.
So the, what, the why and the how, nothing fancy, but actually it gives you a whole new lens and a whole, and a system to be able to now implement it into kind of any scenario. And that was my biggest focus of all when it comes to education is for anyone to be able to use. As I'm finding now, I have athletes that are Olympic weightlifters.
That are figure skaters. that play soccer, play American football, that are general pop. Everyone can use the system. I don't care if you, you know, if you're gem pop and you never want to do ping tear movements, that's fine. You don't have to, you don't have to chase maximal output, but hell, you can get a lot from the light movements, the deep movements, and this sub maximal kind of a little bit more explosive movement.
So that. That's the, that's the introduction course that we've got, which is like a solo loan, like three or four hour course. And then within, within the plus suppliers platform, the coaching, um, or programs that we, that we offer, um, I always try to just give a little bit more, um, just specific stuff, like what you should be experiencing, how to go about maybe.
feeling around certain movements. And, and I think that has, it's been a, it's been a learning lesson for me that comes from a background of I've done this for a long time and I've seen a lot of people do this stuff and I'm now, I'm now putting it into a scenario where no one has ever really done this stuff.
And they're also now trying to teach other people how to do this stuff. So I get a lot of questions back on like, dude, how do I program this into this? How would I possibly fit this into a busy schedule? So this is where, this is, this has been the biggest learning experience for me. And I'm now like starting to work with pro organizations and, and now it's now coming to the forefront of really testing the system.
And I love it. I love. getting the chat, like, how would I work with a baseball team that I have? I have the coaches telling me that they have outfielders playing six days a week. Like, where are you going to get plyometrics? And I'm like, okay, this is something that I've got to figure out. But it, but it, it shows straight away that there's, there's legs in some of the things that I'm trying to do.
So I, yeah, it's, I'm, It's my part of saying a lot of people haven't done this stuff before. They've never had a system like this before. They've just had very, very crude way of attacking plyometrics. And it, and it goes, it goes from a very, um, what I, what I class as kind of a part, a part to whole system.
So in teaching, you talk about, they talk about whole part, whole systems, which is you do the whole thing. Then you break it down. Then you go back to the whole thing, which is pretty standard. But we, we find in like a lot of the strength conditioning world, we have like, let's start with the landing portion.
Then we move on to the takeoff portion. Then I'm like. Why don't we just get people to land and take off, but just in smaller amplitudes, a little bit less, maybe a little deeper. It doesn't have to be crazy, it just has to be something. Teach people, teach them, don't just try to get the physical adaptation out of them, teach them.
Teach them the patterns, teach them the skills to give them a larger base. to be able then to do something of a much higher degree than the person that's just chasing the physical output. So that, that's where my educational stance comes from. And I'm like, I'm like three years, three years, four years into four years.
Wow. It's 2024. Almost four years into really attacking it on social media. And I'm starting to really get some Some people behind me that are like, that I can almost see the love for it as much as I feel for it sort of thing. So I've got a couple of buddies that are, they constantly doing it and constantly doing stuff and teaching it.
And one of my good friends, Chris, one of my good friends, Brandon, they both do it in, in Olympic weightlifting. And it is, I get messages from my friend, Chris, all the time. He's in the UK. And he's like, I went to the nationals at the weekend and he's like, I saw at least 15 guys on platforms using deep tear movements to warm up for their olympic weightlifting.
He was like That's never, ever, ever been seen in a weightlifting room. I'm like, that's cool. That's so cool. That's cool to me. That's impact. So it's, yeah, people, even if it's right, right here, this, even if it's bullshit and it means it makes nothing, it means no difference. It's like people are doing it.
It's kind of cool.
Maestro: They're doing it. And we know, what is it, Seth Godin or not him, one of those Guys, they say clever marketing, only clever marketing can sell once, but only a good product can sell twice. So as we start to see people doing it and staying with it, it's cause it's a good fucking product.
Matt nailed it earlier. And he said like, he's systematized it, which when it comes to bringing, I don't want to say mass appeal, but distribution and getting it into more people, into the hands of more people. So they can actually try it. That is super important. And that is one of the, one of my favorite things that I've seen with the program and I'm like this system.
And I love that Matt credits, you know, where he's gotten all this from. It makes sense. It makes so, so, so much sense. And I'm not surprised that there are high, super high level athletes doing this. I'm not surprised that you're getting invited to speak at all of these places because it makes sense and it works.
Just, it's amazing. Matt, can I, I see the time, but I have like one or two more questions because I want to get it out.
Matt McInnes Watson: You spoke
Maestro: or you said real briefly. about patterns. And so if anyone does the programming, if anyone goes and checks it out, um, or they download the freebie, uh, we'll put all this stuff in the show notes, folks, put everything in there.
Um, but one of the things that you would talk about, you talked about it, and you've explained it on your Instagram as well, but if you could do it right here too, that'd be great. Uh, the difference in the patterns, and we have, Leaps and bounds and what is the difference? Can you just give us some definitions here
Matt McInnes Watson: again?
Another really I get a lot of big coaches around me that are like this guy's talking about this shit again Like it's really not important. I'm like you've got to understand that it is important movement patterns in Bipedal humans have four ways to attack it. Well, sorry, they have three ways to attack it, but you can split one of them in two.
So you have, you have bilateral or two foot movement, and that can be done with your feet in a normal kind of standing stance, or it could be done in a split stance, and that split can be in a held position, or you can exchange those feet. I use the word leaps. A lot of people use the word jump. I don't really care that that movement, it can kind of be interchangeable leaps or, or, or jumps again, if you work in an organization, say you're a PT and you work within a clinic, if you all say the same word, believe me, it makes a lot.
More sense and it makes it takes a hell of a lot of time away from trying to write down This is a one foot or this is a two foot leap and I'm like, it's just a fucking leap It's a leap just say that what like there's the noun you got it done use adjectives around it to then Describe what else you're doing with that Is it a light leap?
Is it a deep leap? Is it a forward lateral? There you go. Done. Bilateral movements. So you've got a leap, a split stance leap, and a split exchange leap. And those are the bilateral movements I, I term. It could be a jump, split stance jump, split exchange jump, if you wanted to. Then we have unilateral movement.
We can move on to, in two different ways on a single leg. You can, you, you can move unilateral unipedally or unilateral bipedally. So unilateral bipedal movement is using one leg and then moving to the other leg and then back and forward. Um, and I call that bounding from one leg to the other unilateral unipedal, or just using one leg to propel yourself along is hopping to me and you don't have to call it one legged hopping.
You don't have to call it two leg hopping for bounding. You just call it bounding and hopping done, job done, finished. And they're like, it's as simple as that. But believe me, people murder it. They murder it. And one of the biggest pet peeves of me is that I know of coaches that have had athletes that they've told to go away and, um, To hop over 42 inch hurdles.
And actually the coach meant to do that two feet and the athlete, no, no, yeah, exactly. So the coach meant two feet and the athlete did it on one foot and they had a catastrophic injury because of it. So yeah, like this is, this is where the terminology comes in. If you work on the online space, you have to get your terminology down to a T and then.
Be really tight on how you talk about things. Never, never move away from it. Decide what it is, go full hog into it, create other words around it. You know? So when I talk about, I talk about different, different directions of movement, I've got forward, I've got lateral and I've got backwards. And if you are doing a forward movement, but you're going kind of side to side forwards, if you're on two foot, it's a slalom to me.
Okay. Other people might use like, it's a 45 degree. I just use that term and I just keep it, keep that term. The people in my ecosystem know exactly what that is because we constantly talk about it. They do those movements and they go, cool. That's that, that's a slalom leap.
Maestro: So with that, sorry to interrupt.
I'm like, this is exciting to me, because I want to stay with the terminology and the programming that you do. With this, because one of the things that, and I had reached out to you about this, we know, and I don't want to say just when we're going to the general population, when we're going to humans, right?
Humans and working with humans, humans do like some variability with things. Some people are able to endure less of it. And they're just, I just want the outcome. And I can like, just have the same thing over and over again. One of the things that I think is phenomenal about your programming is that there is, apparent variability, but it's not haphazard.
It's not like, it isn't this. So can you speak to that and how you've programmed that, but still maintaining a phenomenal outcome and. So
Matt McInnes Watson: one of the best sprint coaches in the world, Stu McMillan, talks about how 80 percent of your program should be completely dialed in and 20 percent of it should be on the, on the fringe of what you're doing.
And I really like that. And I, and I, I kind of take that into the variability, variability stance of things. And I. I love to build, especially in submaximal forms of movement. I love to build the capacity to do things in ever so slightly different forms. So you could be leaping forward, but you could be crisscrossing your feet back and forward over each other.
They could be going inwards and outwards. You're still moving forward in a bilateral way, but I'm changing the stances ever so slightly. You might not think much of it, but actually it's doing ton of work on all the little fine stabilizing muscles in and around the hip girdle that support the knee, that support the lower leg, how the foot works.
So, so I might look at a program and we'll have some staples in there, but we might take 20 to 30 percent of it in the submaximal tiers and add in a little bit of variability and ultimately. when we want to narrow in on things. And you know, if you were to kind of peak an individual and you know, we're getting ready for competition, I'm probably going to turn down that variability
Maestro: and
Matt McInnes Watson: I just keep it relatively simple in that sense.
But if you're a general general population, one, you know, one week I'm doing leaps forward next week, I'm going to do leaps forward, but I'm going to change just, you know, I'm going to invert my feet and then out of my invert and either, if I can say the right words, you know, But, but yeah, you, you know, you could just slightly change the foot position and it can make a hell of a difference.
So that's why I bring in that level of variability. And again, we're trying to build this really nice base of a human so that I talk about in like heat maps. So imagine you got your foot on the floor, a person with very little variability has like a really small heat map around their foot. And that's all they've got in terms of landing.
If I, if I can build someone with a massive heat map around their foot. At that given intensity, if you land slightly off to the right, slightly invert your foot, you're probably pretty safe. So it's exposure to all these different patterns and movements and positions that create this just variable beast.
And I love it.
Maestro: Your, your programs. I got two more questions about this because it's just so, the programs aren't. The actual, um, I shouldn't say programs, the actual workout, the session, they're not, they're not long, like, you're not like, Oh man, you have 15 hours for this. Can you speak to that? And you, you've alluded, alluded to it earlier in terms of the professional baseball player playing six times a week, or you're working with somebody that just has a busier schedule.
What have you found? What do you recommend in terms of volume, frequency, um, duration, and how are you programming with that?
Matt McInnes Watson: I talk about it in exposure, exposure to a certain stimulus regularly. Like I'll say to someone, a coach can have you for 12 weeks, but you come to me for a year and I expose you to something every single week, two or three times a week for a year, and you'll be a different athlete.
That 12 weeks of that coach that you're working with, they might push you to the brink. And okay, you might be, you might be, you might be, you know, this, this kind of new athlete that you think you are, but give it another 12 weeks. If you stop doing that training and you'll regress back to where you were.
Whereas we're so much more on the quality of skill development and opening performance ceiling so that you can deliver higher intensities of output in a more finite way. That's the way that I like to attack it. So a lot of people don't understand how to program volume and plyometrics. And often I'll say to them, do you know what?
Less is more. But frequency is where you win. So, so we, I'll always have staple movements in there. I always say to people hopping never leaves the program. So if you can hop once a week for a year, I can guarantee you that the development of that, and it could be one set of 10 hops on each leg, just keeping that at the forefront of what you're doing.
It's a little stimulus of it all the time. That's wonders. Um, so, so we have staples in there, we have enough volume to just get the adaptations that you want. But ultimately, we go through, over a longer period of time, we go through a lot more when it comes to learning. And I, and I look at this in terms of scales of what people are doing.
So a 12 week training program for you to jump higher, ultimately what's probably happening is your brain is getting a lot more intelligent. You're teaching the body how to fire. Better you're teaching the body how to time things better the actual adaptations on a physiological level probably won't kick in for another six weeks.
So that the second 12 weeks where you might get physiological adaptations. So I'll kind of just scale it all down. I'll say, right, you will see significant changes and that's because you're changing how well your brain works. And then you'll see this constant ebb and flow of like, we push the physical side, we develop the skill to then deliver a higher output.
And then we chase the ability to deliver the higher output. And then it ebbs and flows like that in a way. Um, and, Ultimately, you know, having that, that's, that's why our, our platform is a subscription service is because I believe that I, I would find it really tough to give you something that's 12 weeks long and you might want to run it back to back to back, but actually I think that there's a lot more power in our programs are eight weeks long, but we have, you know, 10 months of programming on there.
So it's quite easy to, to just take yourself through that. You know, block after block after block.
Maestro: I have one question I'm going to write down, but I wanted to say one thing, uh, about what you just said. One of the things that has been the, uh, what's the word I want to use? Well, something that's just made me feel very good.
And I can't think of the word right now is what Matt just said. That even if you just expose yourself to it. One time a week. I think that a lot of us don't start, at least for me, I didn't want to start something because I was like, this is going to be, uh, I need to be able to do it a million times a week.
I need to be able to do all this and I wasn't, part of me was like, I don't know if I have the time and then the other part of me was like, I don't think I can physically do that. So I just stayed away from it. When I first started with, uh, Matt's Programming, I had two programs on this. I wasn't sure where to start.
Actually, I started with the first one, which was like the basic. Like I, I'm not the person that's like, I'm going to go to the most advanced. I was like, I am just starting and went with the basic one. And then Matt did a kickoff call for the launch of the app. And he was talking about the different programs that were in there.
And he was like talking about this program that was for the yielding series. And I was like, that sounds. Amazing. Let me add that program in. And I, just because the way volleyball is, I only had time, like, if I had really fit in for one and I kept seeing, I'm like, I'm skipping this other one and, but I keep doing this yielding one because it made me feel really good as well.
And so I got rid of the other program. Cause you can like on the app, you can. For those of you listening, you can decide like what program you're going to be doing and I was just sticking to the yielding one and even sometimes because of the schedule and traveling, things like that, I could do it once a week or sometimes even less than that and I was still, and I am still to this day, experiencing benefit and that has been just the most comforting, that's the word, the most comforting thing because Matt has said this in his Um, and his posts and his content and his content, but then to physically experience that.
And yes, I know that if I was able to, uh, have a little bit more frequency without crazy, you know, changing the intensity or anything like that, that I could expect other things or I wouldn't be surprised if other things happened. But to know that it's even worthwhile to do. An amount that you think is not going to be worthwhile.
That was phenomenal to experience. It was comforting to hear phenomenal to experience firsthand, which is reason 11 D billion that I'm bringing that on here, because I know a lot of you listening to this are looking for something like this. You don't know how to add it in. You've tried editing it, adding it in.
And then like your legs fell off. It's just too much. You think that you're not going to do enough. So you're not even starting. You got a solution folks. Benedict Cumberbatch over here has
Matt McInnes Watson: Dr. Strange, my question
Maestro: for you, Matt, my last one before I sign off is if someone's poking around the programs, so you have the courses they want to learn the course, but if someone's like, I want to get some bunnies and not be broken, do you have a suggestion on where to start?
Matt McInnes Watson: I mean, our, our return to sport program is, is really good. Um, I'm seeing a lot of power in our yielding series right now. And like I said to you the other day, I think I might make a little like, you know, I might make a little like outside of the subscription one might do the, and I might make like a, kind of like an ebook to go with it sort of thing and show that the power in it and stuff.
So, um, I think it's just a great way to, to introduce yourself to that sort of stuff. So yeah, the return, like I call it the return to sport program, but it could also be like the beginner, beginner. Program we have starter programs as well, which is for new athletes, but some guys are like Dude, I haven't jumped for 20 years or like I, I just not, not great.
Like I get a lot of distance runners that are like really, they're quite intimidated by super dynamic stuff. Um, someone that's maybe like, uh, an offensive lineman that weighs 300 pound. They're like, I need to start real, real easy. I'm like, okay, well, we're going to start you real, real easy. And it, and, and was it built round?
It's built round. the light movement and the deep movement. So maybe the yielding series, maybe the yielding series needs to have the light stuff as well. Maybe my opinion. It does. It does. It has the warmup
Maestro: bits. I'm playing in his hand, but I'm like this warmup. Is, yeah, .
Matt McInnes Watson: Yeah. It's the thing. It's
Maestro: so,
Matt McInnes Watson: yeah, so, so good.
It is, it's good. It's really good. It's, it is just, it's just so simple. Like, and the beauty, like, you know, as I kind of sell to people here, the beauty of our program is you need space and that's it. You don't need boxes, you don't need nothing. No. You don't need,
Maestro: no,
Matt McInnes Watson: you don't even, you know,
Maestro: no.
Matt McInnes Watson: If you don't wanna do shoes, you don't have to use shoes, you, no, you don't.
I can speak to that. You just need a relative surface. I'll be
Maestro: outside in the the turf and have no shoes on. You don't. It is so accessible. In the yielding
Matt McInnes Watson: series especially. Yes, it's so
Maestro: accessible. So, so, so accessible. That is a thought. Like, I can get a plyo box, but I gotta get a soft one because I don't want to hurt my shins.
Believe,
Matt McInnes Watson: like, people, and people tell say this to me all the time are like, you don't use depth jumps and all this sort of stuff. I'm like, I have seen the best of the best athletes in the world use depth jumps. Programs of just using the floor and gravity and creating your own speed and believe me the changes are Unbelievable what you can achieve by doing that sort of stuff.
You don't need fancy equipment. You just need space So and there's nothing more empowering To get out into some, you know, get out on some, on some turf or some grass and just move, just move, get feeling good that it is empowering is really, really, like, believe me, I moved to Southern California and I'm like this in the sun, pair of shades, like, um, if I can, if I can, If I can bottle this and sell it, believe me, I'm going to make so much more money than plyometrics.
Is
Maestro: it? You're not wrong. It's the best of best. All right. The final question, Matt, don't forget folks, we'll put everything in the show notes, but the final question I ask everybody is you have given us so much, like literally this has been such like, I have goosebumps throughout this conversation. This is such a, such a good conversation.
So thank you. Is. Is there anything else that you would like to leave the people with, whether it's words of wisdom, a reminder, or you could say nothing, it's your choice. I just want to make sure that I open the floor so that you can say that all of the things
Matt McInnes Watson: that you want. Yeah. I think dynamic movement is, can be really intimidating.
It intimidates a lot of people with regards to, especially if you're just general pop like you're in, you're in your 30s, you played high school basketball, and you always think back to how bad your knees were. Dynamic movement is scalable to the nth degree. And I, and I'm trying to figure out ways to get this into the elderly population.
We can figure out ways to get the, you know, slowest or worst movers in the world to move. If it has a little bit of a takeoff, and it has a landing with it. You can scale it and every week it can go up a little millimeter or you know a quarter of an inch And you will gradually improve and self selecting What you are going to receive, you know, if you jump on into the air you're creating that landing by whatever you you know You jump an inch you're going to receive an inch If you push yourself off of a box, the box decides.
Okay. So, so, so build trust in knowing that eventually this stuff will get much greater and bigger, expose yourself to it once, twice, if you can do three times a week, amazing, but twice a week will be perfect. Do a little bit, do it often and you'll change the way you'll move forever. Eric, Eric is 75 and he still does plyometrics.
It might not be the most dynamic things you've ever seen, but that's goals right there for me.
Maestro: This, I want to challenge all of us folks. Cause this is a, people listen to this. We are dynamic. People would like to move. And I know, I think every single person listening, you wouldn't be listening to this otherwise.
I think that's the goal that we should be setting. I think that, you know, we see some of these goals set of just like, I want to be moving, I want to like be able to do something when I'm older. What about this? What about if we all collectively. Raise the bar a little bit and start making the norm what I think it can and should be like we were born to do this born to move you want to be high jumping if you don't want but what if we collectively all of us listening to this decide to raise that bar and be like my goal is that when I'm 75 I'm still doing plyometrics.
I think that that changes everything for us. Let's, let's raise that ceiling.
Matt McInnes Watson: So if you, if you're in your twenties, thirties and forties, now's the time for you to do the big stuff. So build up to do the big stuff. So then we get into our fifties, sixties and seventies and even eighties, we can still be doing the lighter, easier stuff.
Maestro: Be amazing, right? Because right now people are just trying not to fall. They're like, I don't want to fall. Then I'll die like that. I don't want that as a standard. And my goal is awful when I'm 80 or 70 or 90 like
Matt McInnes Watson: billion dollar industry is the billion dollar industry.
Maestro: I don't want
Matt McInnes Watson: that fools. hip surgeries and internal organ damage from those fools.
The biggest, one of the biggest industries in the elderly population. I can't even imagine what it would do for you cognitively as well, just being that much sharper.
Maestro: Yes, and we all have the capacity to do it. Start now
Matt McInnes Watson: you space you you want to like people say to me, you know I I'm not able to do this because I'm like I've had guys in the Philippines Dodging potholes in the street doing it on hard concrete for three years now.
Some of the guys from the Philippines have been doing my plyometrics since we launched in 2020 when we were like, I didn't have any reach whatsoever, but a couple of guys started out with me and I probably have got probably 60, 70 guys from the Philippines that use our stuff. Are they still on the streets?
Yes, no complaining. Get out, get it done. You want to see the amount of people that do it in their apartments. What guys in New York that do it in like a studio. They're like, my neighbors are pissed off with me, but I'm getting so much better at this.
Maestro: I'm not getting an injury and I'm old. I'm not falling and busting my hip.
Get the neighbors to do it too. We know you live in a walk up. It'll be helpful for
Matt McInnes Watson: them. Exactly. So
Maestro: good, Matt. This was been. Amazing. Just, I am so grateful for your brain. I'm grateful for all the time that you take to do this. I'm grateful for the Perkin that you put out. You are well on that rocket. The rocket has taken off, but anyone that's listening to this for the 11 billion, 11 billion time, everything will be linked in the show notes.
Matt, real quick, uh, on Instagram, you are.
Matt McInnes Watson: Mckinnis Watson. M C I N N E S W A T S O N. We will link
Maestro: that, and he's also a Plus Plyas. We've got two accounts going. We'll link all of that. Give him a follow. Give him a little DM. Sign up for the program, folks. If you have any questions, fucking sign up. Just try it.
It's 37. You don't like it? Stop. You're fine,
Matt McInnes Watson: give it a try, but
Maestro: it does have the potential to change your life. Yeah, and if you,
Matt McInnes Watson: if you, if you DM me, just, you know, just tell, and you, you'd never heard of me before. Just tell me that you, you listen to the show, um, at least put that in there. Don't just, you know, message me and start the conversation, but it be, do you know what I mean?
Like it's going to trigger so much more of me wanting to speak to you. Give
Maestro: it some context, let them know that you are good people. Uh, don't be a dick when you reach out, okay? Matt, thank you. Thank you so
Matt McInnes Watson: much. Thank you. Thank you. It's been great.
Maestro: You folks listening. Thank you. We know you could have been doing anything and you chose to listen to us.
And for that, we are both endlessly, endlessly, endlessly appreciative. My ask for you today, I got two, one. Shoot Matt a little DM, say hello, introduce yourself, give yourself some context of the conversation, some context. And then number two, let's commit to collectively raising the ceiling here and changing that goal.
So that it's not that we're not trying to die, not die when we're 75 or 80, trying to not fall. Let's collectively change that such that it's, we're still doing plyometrics well into our 70s, 80s, 90s. And. Plus. All right? All right. That's all I got for you. Until next time friends, Matt and Maestro, out.
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