Joe Rogan Experience #1399 - Pavel Tsatsouline

1. 0:00 – 15:00

   All right, here we…

   1. JRJoe Rogan0:04

      All right, here we go. What's up, man? How are you?

   2. PTPavel Tsatsouline0:06

      Joe, great to be on the show.

   3. JRJoe Rogan0:08

      It's a pleasure. It's a pleasure to meet you, and an honor. I've, I've been following your work for a long time, man. I mean-

   4. PTPavel Tsatsouline0:13

      Thank you, Joe.

   5. JRJoe Rogan0:13

      ... I was first introduced to you and your methods by Steve Maxwell, who was a, you know, a huge proponent of the kettlebell. And then I started getting into your videos.

   6. PTPavel Tsatsouline0:22

      A very smart coach, yeah.

   7. JRJoe Rogan0:23

      Yeah, very good. And, uh, I started getting into your videos, and I've read your books. And, uh, so-

   8. PTPavel Tsatsouline0:28

      Thank you.

   9. JRJoe Rogan0:28

      ... for me, it's an honor.

   10. PTPavel Tsatsouline0:29

       My pleasure.

   11. JRJoe Rogan0:30

       How long have you been, uh, teaching and practicing with kettlebells? Since you were little?

   12. PTPavel Tsatsouline0:36

       Something like that, medium.

   13. JRJoe Rogan0:37

       (laughs) Since you were medium-sized?

   14. PTPavel Tsatsouline0:38

       Medium-sized. Yeah, it's kind of like baseball, you know.

   15. JRJoe Rogan0:40

       In-

   16. PTPavel Tsatsouline0:40

       It's a pretty common thing.

   17. JRJoe Rogan0:41

       ... in Russia?

   18. PTPavel Tsatsouline0:42

       In the Soviet Union, yeah, it is.

   19. JRJoe Rogan0:43

       Why didn't it catch on here until you came over here?

   20. PTPavel Tsatsouline0:50

       You know what? I don't think people really tried. I don't think people really understood that it would catch on, and I did not think it would happen either. So I'm sitting with my friend, Marty Gallagher, having steaks, years back. Marty is a former coach for Powerlifting Team USA and, uh, coach of some top lifters. And you were just trading old war stories, talk- talking about stuff, and I told him about kettlebells. He says, "Well, you've got to teach Americans how to do that." And I said, "Marty, you don't understand. This stuff is too hard. Nobody's gonna wanna do this." And he said, "You don't understand. People want to do this." And, uh, I wrote an article for, based on Marty's suggestion, for Milo. So Milo was a publication, niche publication, for strange guys who lift rocks, and bend things, and break things, and so on and so forth. And, uh, so that was the start of it. And then after that, I told my publisher about it, and, uh, he said, "Well, come on, let's just make kettlebells and teach people." I had told him the same thing, "You don't understand, that people will not wanna do this. This is too hard." And, but he convinced me, and they convinced me, and the rest is history.

   21. JRJoe Rogan1:58

       Why did you think that it was popular in the Soviet Union but wouldn't be popular in America?

   22. PTPavel Tsatsouline2:05

       You know, this is something that you just see. It's a very common thing though, so you just see this, you don't think much about this. Um, who knows?

   23. JRJoe Rogan2:15

       Yeah, but it was popular over there.

   24. PTPavel Tsatsouline2:17

       Yeah.

   25. JRJoe Rogan2:17

       And effective.

   26. PTPavel Tsatsouline2:18

       Since at least, since at least 1700s, or possibly before that.

   27. JRJoe Rogan2:23

       But this country is so-

   28. PTPavel Tsatsouline2:24

       Yeah.

   29. JRJoe Rogan2:25

       ... performance-oriented and so sports-oriented and so competitive. Why wouldn't you think that that would be sort of a natural training modality, that would, they would immediately adopt it?

   30. PTPavel Tsatsouline2:35

       You got me there.
2. 15:00 – 30:00

   Mm-hmm. …

   1. PTPavel Tsatsouline15:01

      the variable overload makes me think of, uh... remember in Ferris Bueller's Day Off where the kid is looking at, uh, Seurat's painting? You know-

   2. NANarrator15:13

      Mm-hmm.

   3. PTPavel Tsatsouline15:13

      ... the pointillist, there all these dots right there? So when you step away, you see something. You start getting closer, just a whole bunch of dots. It just disappears. So what's the story behind that? So the story is this. This method, the Soviet Olympic weightlifting method, was developed, uh, over several decades by a number of coaches, by a number of scientists, so it's a very much collaborative effort. So Vorobyov was one for sure, Medvedev, Cherniak, a number of others. And it was a very... bef- by- by- before even dissecting this method, let me tell you how, how successful this method was. (swallows) You can look up the world, uh, weightlifting records and Olympic weightlifting and hear about all these different records set by this lifter, that lifter, and so on and so forth. If you... Few people realize that the International Weightlifting Federation has changed the weight classes at- two or three times since the '80s, and the reason they did that is to erase the drug, the record set by the drug-taking athletes back then. Of course, you know, I'm very happy that as soon as they changed the weight classes, lifters stopped taking drugs like that. So if you look at these records, kilo per kilo, pound per pound, and if you chart them, compare them to what they did then to what they do today, you will find that while they did catch up in a few weight classes, in about half of these classes, the records from the '80s still stand. So for example, what Yurik Vardanyan did in 1980 at, uh, 82 kilos, he totaled 400 kilos in the snatch and the clean and jerk. That's never been done before. And Yurik Vardanyan was a wiry guy. You wouldn't have taken him for a lifter. Just amazing. So first of all, the system still remains, if we're just taking a very large, big picture, 50,000-foot look at strength, there are a great many ways of getting strong. Some of them very good, some that are mediocre, some that are very bad, but historically in lifting sports, the two systems that have been predominant are the Soviet weightlifting system and the American classic powerlifting system from the '70s and '80s. Okay? So that was kind of a long detour to... before I tell you why the stuff that they figured out back in 1960s, why it matters just to say it still is the best, it still rules. So what they did is, was very empirical. In... for example, when you're studying endurance, going into the cell, uh, studying the biochemistry of the cell in the body, taking it apart, figuring out how this works is very helpful. Very. On the other hand, when you're dealing with strength, that approach has been, uh, not really effective.So if we talk about muscle, muscle training, for example, hypertrophy, we still have no idea what the hell's going on. So we can... We know which buttons to push, but that's just empirical knowledge. That's not the understanding of the cell. So-

   4. JRJoe Rogan18:36

      So we really don't u- understand hypertrophy?

   5. PTPavel Tsatsouline18:38

      No.

   6. JRJoe Rogan18:38

      Really?

   7. PTPavel Tsatsouline18:39

      No, we do not.

   8. JRJoe Rogan18:40

      Wow.

   9. PTPavel Tsatsouline18:41

      No. And let's... I'll be happy to talk about this, but if you don't mind-

   10. JRJoe Rogan18:44

       Okay, yeah, please, please.

   11. PTPavel Tsatsouline18:44

       ... let me just finish on this variable overload and the Soviet weightlifting system. So, what they did, even though they also... you know, they got the muscle look at that as well, just didn't learn as much. But the coaches programmed particular loads for athletes, and watch what happened. And then they watched how the athletes performed, and they watched how the top athletes performed, and they looked for patterns. And they were very open-minded, so they're not thinking like, "Well, it's gotta be just the heaviest weights will do that," or, "It's gotta be the training to failure is gonna do that." It's not the case. So just to give you an example of how enormous that undertaking was, so typical strength training studies, what? Six weeks for some untrained college subjects, you know, guys who are just on their phones. Professor Medvedev, who was also world champion, he studied the training loads of top weightlifters only when they were successful in competition for four Olympic cycles. Four. So we're talking about 16 years, and then somebody else do it for another cycle. And there were just an amazing patterns just emerged. So for instance, I'm gonna give you, give you a rundown of what the patterns are. (drinks water) There are certain optimal volumes, how much exercise you do. There are certain optimal intensities. So if you follow the variable overload method, the optimal intensity, so the average intensity, would be about 75% of your max, which for most people would be probably somewhere like eight reps or something you could do, maybe 10, eh, maybe eight. And you will see that about half of all the lifts that you do are about 75%, 80%. Now, where do all the rest, the other lifts come in? So there's a normal distribution, so you'll find that 75%, 80% are on the top, 80%, 85% a little bit lower, you know? So the lighter weights, like 60%, are on the bottom, and the heavy weights, like 90% and, and higher are on the bottom as well. So they figured out you just have to do most of your work with these average weights. They are not so light, so you, you're gonna respect them, but they're not so heavy that you have any question about performing lifting them correctly. So, and then there is another aspect of intensity is just doing some heavier lifts, very... a very carefully measured number of heavy lifts in addition, like 90% or whatever, occasionally. Then they figured out the proper volumes. Just to give you an idea, if you're looking at, uh, let's say, you know, you might be doing 30 reps of a given exercise per session, what have you, although there's variability. But then there's also something else that's very interesting, is the optimal number of repetitions with a given weight. And this is what hurt peop- hurts people's heads. If you look at it, the weights from 70% to 90%, the optimal number of repetitions are one-third to two-thirds of your maximum. So let me give you an example to the reader, uh, to the listener. Let's say that you're lifting a 10 rep max weight. So you go all out, as hard as possible. You can do 10 reps. In training, you should be doing, um... you should be doing three to six reps. That's it. That's, that's the window. And why is that? We have no idea. But the scientists, like in this case that was... I think it was Matveev was involved in that, the father of periodization. I think it was one of the scientists. They experimented with all sorts of rep ranges, and they figured out that if the reps are too low with a given weight, you don't get stronger. If the reps get too high, either the athlete gets hurt or his technique is compromised or he's just unable to perform the optimal volume. So, pretty much roughly, you're looking at doing about half of the reps you're capable of. That's it. And people can argue with this all they want, like "What's the science behind this?" There's no science. We don't know. The science is purely empirical. This particular method is purely empirical. It worked for decades. It still does. And that's one of the ways you can get strong. So in summary, we have... uh, we have... sorry, step loading, which is where you stay with the same weight for a while or the same reps, whatever, and then make a sudden jump. That's the best way f- to train for beginners usually. We have wave loading, or cycling, which is we build up, jump back, and build up again. And we have variable loading, which is almost, almost chaotic, where you just constantly surprise the body with what we're throwing at it, but we do that within very narrow parameters.

   12. JRJoe Rogan23:58

       So this method was purely developed by studying winners.

   13. PTPavel Tsatsouline24:05

       And w- winners is where they finally took that, but the studies were done at every level.

   14. JRJoe Rogan24:10

       Mm-hmm.

   15. PTPavel Tsatsouline24:10

       So for example, coaches in the field would conduct something called ped- pedagogical experiments, which is, which is a study that's not quite as, um... not quite as scientifically solid, but it's still good enough.So they first would test things out at lower level athletes, and then will finally take it to higher level athletes. So the things that I'm telling you about, they have been universally effective for athletes above the beginner level. And of course, there are some subtle changes as you progress, there are some subtleties. Like for instance, uh, notice that I said that you have to use some heavy lifts, like 90%, 95%, but it has to be very surgical about how many. So for instance, beginners do none, advanced lifters need to do just some but not many, intermediate lifters can do the most. Or heavy weightlifters can do not as many, lighter ones can do more. So there are some d- differences at different levels, but the principle's fundamentally the same.

   16. JRJoe Rogan25:10

       And do these principles apply whether people are taking drugs or not? So-

   17. PTPavel Tsatsouline25:14

       Yes, they do.

   18. JRJoe Rogan25:15

       They are.

   19. PTPavel Tsatsouline25:15

       The difference is, in fact, the, uh, Verkhoshansky and Medvedev made a, a very strong case, a very strong case of that. They used the Soviet euphemism for that was restoratives-

   20. JRJoe Rogan25:27

       (laughs)

   21. PTPavel Tsatsouline25:27

       ... and they said that (laughs) this is universal even with restoratives or not. The difference for the s- for the drugs would be as just that the volumes will be higher, you'll be able to train more. That's pretty much the difference. But the body will still work the same way.

   22. JRJoe Rogan25:42

       Now these principles, have they caught on in the United States? I mean, they've caught on with StrongFirst-

   23. PTPavel Tsatsouline25:49

       Mm-hmm.

   24. JRJoe Rogan25:49

       ... and I know that you t- you implement these and-

   25. PTPavel Tsatsouline25:51

       Mm-hmm.

   26. JRJoe Rogan25:51

       ... people teach these. But is this something that's e- universally sort of accepted, or is it still something that people are qu- l- cautiously curious about?

   27. PTPavel Tsatsouline26:01

       It's definitely not universal, in part because people don't know about it, in part you have to implement this correctly. So right now, there's several, there's several areas where you would see that, is, um, well, one, obviously the Voroshayko's powerlifting programs that have been imported here, but they're used by powerlifters.

   28. JRJoe Rogan26:22

       Mm-hmm.

   29. PTPavel Tsatsouline26:22

       The other is we have the program called PlanStrong which is... and again, this is a very faithful representation of the Soviet weightlifting system, but applied to general strength exercises like, you know, squats, deadlifts, and so on. And the other thing what we also do, and this is what we do with, um, with, with the military and so on and so forth, we have some simple programs, very simple programs, that are designed, um, using this Delta-20 principle and using these optimal loads that they could just go out and use. The nice thing is, unlike progressive overload, cycling, if something happens you got a problem. Here or there is some variability. So in summary, just say no, it's not widely known. It's not.

   30. JRJoe Rogan27:09

       Now, in the United States-
3. 30:00 – 45:00

   Mm-hmm. …

   1. JRJoe Rogan30:00

      very embraced here in America-

   2. PTPavel Tsatsouline30:02

      Mm-hmm.

   3. JRJoe Rogan30:02

      ... you know, with the meatheads, which are my people. The, the thing about it is that you think that mental toughness is going to push you past your limits or what your perceived limits are and that that's where the real strength happens, that's where the real growth takes place.

   4. PTPavel Tsatsouline30:19

      That's a vi- that's a very valid point for, for you mentally-

   5. JRJoe Rogan30:24

      Mm-hmm.

   6. PTPavel Tsatsouline30:24

      ... not physically.

   7. JRJoe Rogan30:26

      (laughs)

   8. PTPavel Tsatsouline30:26

      Mentally but periodically, this is very important point, you have to push the b- push the body to the limit, whether in competition or some other manner-

   9. JRJoe Rogan30:34

      Mm-hmm.

   10. PTPavel Tsatsouline30:34

       ... but for a short period of time and not too often. That's very important.

   11. JRJoe Rogan30:39

       You know who Ronnie Coleman is, right?

   12. PTPavel Tsatsouline30:40

       ... yeah.

   13. JRJoe Rogan30:41

       You know, Ronnie Coleman, who was, uh, Mr. Olympia, just, uh, at one point in time, one of the most impressive and spectacular physiques on Earth-

   14. PTPavel Tsatsouline30:48

       Mm-hmm.

   15. JRJoe Rogan30:48

       ... is now so injured from all of his incredible lifts. He was known for lifting enormous, enormous amounts of weight. And, uh, I mean, I think when they asked him about if he'd do anything different, 'cause I think he's had... I- I hope I'm not wrong, but I think more than 11 back surgeries over the last few years.

   16. PTPavel Tsatsouline31:10

       Yeah.

   17. JRJoe Rogan31:10

       Y- he's essentially herniated every single disc in his back and, uh, a series of back operations that's left him w- walking with crutches, and, you know, it's- it's bad. Um, but this is the result of this sort of mindset of a champion, you know, that he was-

   18. PTPavel Tsatsouline31:29

       Joe, pardon me. I'm going to interrupt you for a second.

   19. JRJoe Rogan31:32

       Please.

   20. PTPavel Tsatsouline31:32

       The champion has that mindset on the platform. The champion, whenever the champion is in the gym, he or she is going to approach this as a, as a working man, pretty much. "This is the plan, this is what I do." So, you will find that absolutely in, in sports, you have to be extremely tough, and you have to model some of that in training as well, but in a very, very careful, timed manner.

   21. JRJoe Rogan31:57

       Yeah.

   22. PTPavel Tsatsouline31:57

       So f- for instance, um... top lifters, top powerlifters, they max twice a year, at the Nationals and at the Worlds. Meanwhile, they train hard, they push themselves, they do everything right, but they do not try to squeeze out one extra rep. It just simply will not work. It does not work. I remember having a conversation with Andy Bolton. Andy is, uh, the first man to deadlift 1,000 pounds, and just spectacular athlete. If you watch Andy pull in competition, it's just, just unbelievable. It's a thing of beauty. And I just... Andy was telling me how, how some lifters he have seen that would just simply try to hang with others, better lifters in the gym, and try to repeat exactly what they do. And that's what happens after that. Nothing good happens from that.

   23. JRJoe Rogan32:51

       Mm-hmm.

   24. PTPavel Tsatsouline32:51

       You have to be tough when it's time. In the gym, you have to do the plan. And, like for example, um, let's talk about heavy lifting.

   25. JRJoe Rogan33:04

       Okay.

   26. PTPavel Tsatsouline33:04

       Just heavy singles, let's say. If... I'm sure everybody who listens to your program has, at what point of their life, decided to up their bench press by going to a maximum once a week. I'm sure everybody has. I have, you have, everybody has. So how long did it last? Typically six weeks for a beginner, and an advanced lifter might tolerate two or three weeks, and that's about it. So for whatever reasons, after that, you know, your nervous system starts burning out, your endocrine system can't keep up, and that's it. So, for that reason, before the competition, you might take like a 90% single or double or something like that. And if you look at the longevity of powerlifters, and if you look at longevity of the weightlifters of the Soviet school, uh, it's very impressive. I'll give you one great example. So, well, David Regehr himself, who was the champion around, you know, in the '70s. So he is way... he is probably pushing 70 right now, you know, lives in a farm, works in a farm. But his co-... doing great, very healthy. But his coach, that's, that's an even more interesting story. Uh, Rudolph Plueckfelder, he was probably the oldest to win the Olympics in weightlifting. He was 36. And he worked in the mines in daytime and then trained hard. So Plueckfelder ethnically he- so, ethnically he's German, so one of the Germans living in the Soviet Union. And eventually, when the Soviet Union fell apart, Plueckfelder immigrated to Germany. And so (laughs) a journalist came to visit him. And so here is this really spry looking guy fooling around in the garden, and the journalist is asking him, "Pardon me, sir, may I speak to your dad?" So here's this guy who is, uh, almost 90 years old, who still looks about 30 years younger, who still does jump squats with 90 kilos for sets of 10, and this is an example. So, heavy weights don't have the same longevity, but that has more... that does not have anything to do with the training system. That has to do with the fact the strain you put on your system by eating so much. Just not so good. But these guys have longevity. If you also look at, uh, the powerlifters, most successful powerlifters, American powerlifters, Eddie Cohn competed for, if I'm not mistaken, about 30 years, at the highest level, from a very lightweight class to much heavier one. And he stayed super healthy throughout. He maybe had one injury. And Eddie right now, years have... after retirement, is very, very healthy. So you will find that the mentality of saving this Eye of the Tiger for when it matters, as opposed to treating every training day as a competition, that makes a big difference for performance and for longevity.

   27. JRJoe Rogan36:07

       It just battles the mindset of always do more, always push harder, always give your all, leave everything in the gym. Th- this, this is the mindset that people have been sort of indoctrinated into.

   28. PTPavel Tsatsouline36:21

       Sure.

   29. JRJoe Rogan36:21

       That they think that hard work is what really matters, but-

   30. PTPavel Tsatsouline36:24

       Hard work does matter, but hard work can come in a lot of different... it can manifest itself differently.
4. 45:00 – 1:00:00

   Okay. …

   1. PTPavel Tsatsouline45:00

      get-up which is an amazing exercise, cannot do it as well with other implements. But the ballistics, that's another unique benefit of the kettlebell, swings and snatches, exercises like that. The benefits of these exercises are many. So first of all, ballistic loading obviously is part of sports and it's a part of life, and oftentimes i- it's hard to do it safely. Go ahead and start jumping. It... Like, before somebody starts jumping correctly, jumping off boxes and so on and so forth, just even, you know, hopping across the floor, it requires some coaching, it requires getting some strength, it requires addressing some dysfunction, so on and so forth. The kettlebell swing, for example, it's... So many hard men with high mileage who are really banged up in so many different ways, their backs, their knees, their hips, they're able to do swings safely, and that's just remarkable. And w- the ballistic contraction's very important, so you have to run, you have to jump, you have to do things like that, but it goes beyond that for your health, for your longevity. So as we grow older, um, a- there's a loss of type II musc- muscle fibers, so the strong ones, the fast-twitch fibers, and there are several problems with that. First of all, they're metabolically needed for the body to be healthy, to process sugar, so on, so on and so forth. Second is to deal with real-life situations, you know? Like, it's very unfortunate, some old person trips and breaks their hip, it's terrible, and oftentimes the reason is just weakness. And we need these fast fibers because whenever you trip and you have this reflexive contraction, these fibers go online first. So if you don't have them anymore, you got massive problems, right? So another reason is in type II fibers, there is, uh... Mitochondrial degeneration takes place as we grow older, much faster than others, and if you don't take care of that, it's also... That's aging. So you've gotta train these type II fibers, and there are only two ways to train type II fibers. It's heavy or fast, so there's no third way.

   2. JRJoe Rogan47:26

      Okay.

   3. PTPavel Tsatsouline47:26

      So whenever people try to do some sort of a super slow this or Pilates that, whatever, it's not gonna do it. So you have to train heavy or you have to train fast if you wanna stay young.

   4. JRJoe Rogan47:39

      So are you, uh, completely against that, kind of, super slow training?

   5. PTPavel Tsatsouline47:44

      Not at all, but for totally different reasons. There is, um... Well, obviously one reason is possibly if somebody's injured, right?

   6. JRJoe Rogan47:51

      Mm-hmm.

   7. PTPavel Tsatsouline47:53

      Another reason is to develop your type I endurance fibers, hypertrophy for these fibers. Why would you want to do that? Well, first of all, type I fibers, the downside of these fibers is they contract slower, so obviously that's a downside for some sports, for some activities, but they're also more efficient, which means it's plus for other sports, right? So (clears throat) another positive here, they already come pre-equipped with mitochondria. So mitochondria, that's where aerobic metabolism takes place, and by building your type I fibers you automatically get more endurance in addition to muscle mass and strength too. So super slow work is good for that, but it has to be done correctly. Uh, the proper methods were developed by Russian Professor Viktor Siluyanov, and so he developed this method, I'm gonna summarize it for you right now for your, for your listeners, that's something you can easily do yourself. Well, ha, easily is not the word. Simply-So, the duration of a set is 30 to 60 seconds. You have to select the range of motion where there is no, uh, there is no stacking, there is no s- there is no support from your bones at all. So, for example, if you were to do a squat, you go down below parallel, but not to the point where you're sitting on your calves, and come up just a little above parallel, and below again. So, just at most unpleasant, the most painful area.

   8. JRJoe Rogan49:33

      Mm-hmm.

   9. PTPavel Tsatsouline49:34

      If you're doing, let's say, push-ups for, for your chest, for example, you would almost brush the deck with your chest, come up about halfway, and then come back down. And the speed is very slow, so there's no momentum at all. Now, it doesn't sound like anything new, but here's what's new. Silouanov, uh, optimized the rest periods, and, and that's a big game ch- game changer. Normally when people train in this manner, bodybuilders and others, they just want to get more s- burn possible. And by the way, the burn is awful, and in this particular case, you want to train close to failure, in this particular case. That's just a muscular training. That's not strength training per se. So, they try to run from one set to the next. So they'll do that, let's say that 30-second set, then they will just, you know, rest for 30 seconds and do it again, completely hammer themselves. The problem with that is even though we do not know the exact mechanisms of muscle growth, we do know that some lactic acid is needed, but too much lactic acid is destructive. So, what Silouanov did is he figured out is after this kind of set, you have to rest for five to 10 minutes. And that sounds, for people, it's, it's, it's very hard mental thing to do. So, here I am going for this massive burn, and I have to wait for five to 10 minutes. But it's very simple. You introduce another exercise in between. So, train twice a week, five to, five to 10 sets on the heavy day, eventually, once you build up to it, and about one to three sets on a light day. That's it.

   10. JRJoe Rogan51:20

       Now, this is incorporating SuperSlow techniques?

   11. PTPavel Tsatsouline51:22

       Oh, yeah.

   12. JRJoe Rogan51:23

       You-

   13. PTPavel Tsatsouline51:23

       And who would this be good for? Wrestlers.

   14. JRJoe Rogan51:25

       Mm-hmm.

   15. PTPavel Tsatsouline51:26

       For wrestlers, it's spectacular.

   16. JRJoe Rogan51:27

       Yeah.

   17. PTPavel Tsatsouline51:28

       Because even though there are explosive elements there as well, but it's also very much there's that static element, static endurance. And, uh, one of my StrongFirst, one of my StrongFirst certified instructors, Roger from the UK, he ... I had him follow this protocol, um, before he and his crew rowed across the Atlantic, and he did much better after than most people and was much happier, if you can be happier rowing across the Atlantic. So, for rowing, for wrestling, for bodybuilding, for some people who cannot do anything else. So that's a good protocol.

   18. JRJoe Rogan52:03

       So, this is, uh, essentially a muscular endurance protocol.

   19. PTPavel Tsatsouline52:06

       M- you know what? It's both.

   20. JRJoe Rogan52:08

       Okay.

   21. PTPavel Tsatsouline52:08

       Because, because the muscles getting bigger-

   22. JRJoe Rogan52:10

       Right.

   23. PTPavel Tsatsouline52:11

       ... and it will get stronger as well.

   24. JRJoe Rogan52:12

       But it won't be faster. It's not-

   25. PTPavel Tsatsouline52:14

       No.

   26. JRJoe Rogan52:14

       ... something you would-

   27. PTPavel Tsatsouline52:14

       No.

   28. JRJoe Rogan52:14

       ... incorporate with a boxer?

   29. PTPavel Tsatsouline52:16

       I would... No, absolutely not.

   30. JRJoe Rogan52:17

       Yeah.
5. 1:00:00 – 1:15:00

   How much time walking…

   1. PTPavel Tsatsouline1:00:00

      there's this extra volume bl- uh, of blood is moving, and it stretches the heart. So it works really well. So you can use the interval method as well, but it's ... it was found it's used best after, um, after a period of steady state training. It's very demanding on the body and it's not ... it's just, it's too easy to have problems with the heart if you start using it prematurely. Then there's also such a thing as high heart rate under heavy loads. So in this particular case, we're talking about dynamic exercises. So what's dynamic exercise? Running, uh, bicycling, skiing, even light kettlebell swings. That's dynamic exercise. When you start doing static exercise, let's say you're trying to do squats, heavy squats, for, you know, to get your cardio, so to say, that's not the best idea, because that interferes with the blood flow that ... It's something called afterload versus preload. The heart gets thicker instead of the heart gets, you know, gets stretched and bigger. So it's not the optimal way to train the heart.You can, again, the simple way you can use, uh, dynamic exercise and interval type training, or repeat training in this case, to train your heart is to do an exercise that's dynamic in nature to raise your heart rate to about, let's say, 80%, 90%. Which would be 80% to 90%, it would be where you can say maybe a couple words. You know? You're not (gasps) you're not dying yet. You can still answer a question. And then you just walk around, and you do it again. So that's a simple way of doing that.

   2. JRJoe Rogan1:01:51

      How much time walking around?

   3. PTPavel Tsatsouline1:01:53

      That depends. That totally depends on who you are-

   4. JRJoe Rogan1:01:55

      Depends on-

   5. PTPavel Tsatsouline1:01:56

      ... how fast you recover.

   6. JRJoe Rogan1:01:56

      ... how fast your, your heart rate-

   7. PTPavel Tsatsouline1:01:57

      Yeah.

   8. JRJoe Rogan1:01:57

      ... drops back down? And what do you wanna like-

   9. PTPavel Tsatsouline1:02:00

      (coughs)

   10. JRJoe Rogan1:02:00

       ... is there a number? Do you wanna keep it in the 140s, the 150s? Is it dependent upon your age?

   11. PTPavel Tsatsouline1:02:04

       Okay. In this particular case, you would, you would drop it down. The original guidelines were done for young people, those 120, 130 beats. So you're talking about 60%, 65%. And pretty much if you're just looking at being able to pass the talk test, which means you can talk, you know, uh, short sentences.

   12. JRJoe Rogan1:02:22

       Mm-hmm.

   13. PTPavel Tsatsouline1:02:23

       "I can speak in short," something like that, right? So, for example, you do a set of 10 swings really powerful with a kettlebell. Walk around a little bit. When you feel that you can speak again, you do it again, do it again. So that's a simple way of doing that. But the heart is only a very small part of endurance. So we definitely need to do some cardio for our health, and athletes definitely need to do it for their performance, but, um, what we really need to focus on is you need mitochondria. So mitochondria in the, in the muscle cell. So that's where energy is being converted aerobically, which means efficiently. So if you look at the way your muscle uses energy, so you will get this energy with food, convert it, it goes down. Eventually, the final, uh, currency, so to say, is some, something called ATP. But it's only used f- you know, you only have it for a few seconds. So it has to be re- reloaded. So we have three main energy systems. So we have the, um, creatine phosphate system. It's very powerful, but it's only can do f- you know, go for just some seconds. And it's clean burning. We have our aerobic system that's not powerful at all, but it's longer lasting. And we have the glycolytic system that's kind of in between that dumps a lot of acid and other fatigue metabolites in there. So what we want to do is we want to develop these mitochondria in our muscles. It's easier to do in slow fibers, and it's a little more involved in fast fibers. I'll tell you how we can do that. But it can be done. So what we're looking for, instead of trying to trash the muscle with acid, we are trying to train in a way that to produce less acid. And then only before the competition, right before the competition, couple weeks out, you do a couple of kind of smokers like that to get yourself used to that, that saying. So the way we develop mitochondria, which means make your muscle oxidative, make your muscle enduring and not polluting, in slow fibers it's simply moving right below anaerobic threshold. So anaerobic threshold, it's that intensity at which you, you know, acid is accumulating just up to a certain point and stays at that steady state, then you can keep disposing of that for a while, for l- quite a while. As soon as you go above it, very rapidly (imitates crunching) you crash. So, running right below the anaerobic threshold is the primary training method for endurance athletes. And how do you know that you ran the threshold? When you're failing the talk test. That's a simple way to do that. And it's very interesting that endurance athletes, even though who are not necessarily well-educated, they kinda tend to gravitate toward that intensity. And so what happens is we are producing just small amounts of acid, and the body finally is able to, you know, produce less and less. So that's how we train aerobic, um... I'm sorry, that's how we train mitochondria in slow fibers. For fast fibers, it becomes something more interesting. So the conditions, the conditions for making the mitochondria, uh, be able to handle more traffic without producing as much acid is push them just to the edge of acidosis, just, just to the edge, and do it over and over and over. So Professor Verkhoshansky, uh, back in the '80s, figured out that, uh, that's the guy who invented Plyometrics and so on. So he figured out, so here's what we do. Imagine that you are sprinting, let's say you're sprinting for five, seven seconds. And then you are just walking, and you're sprinting again, and you're just walking. But you're doing that, you're measuring your blood, um, lactate, and it still keeps below the threshold. And you sustain that for, let's say, 40 minutes. So think of this for a second. So you're sprinting very intensely, but you d- you stop before you start burning. You get to the point of just light muscular fatigue, and you do it over and over and over. So if we talk about the coaching terminology, it's, um, repeat training versus interval training. So what is interval training?Pardon me, Joe, I have to take a step to the side. So there are three types of rest periods between your sets, whether you're running, lifting, whatever. So there's a stress period, that means that you will have a harder time to do the same thing, or you will not be able to repeat it, right? That's interval training. There is the supercompensation period, which means if you wait extra long time, you'll perform even better. Like for example, if you do a set of pull-ups, wait for 15 minutes, you might be able to do more 15 minutes later. And there is the ordinary period, which is just you'll be able to repeat it over and over. So that's... In coaching speak, it's called repeat training. Repeat versus interval. So we're trying to sustain that same level of performance for 40 minutes, let's say. So that's an example of how we develop mitochondria in fast-twitch fibers. And the same thing we can do with kettlebell swings, the same thing you can do, uh, working a heavy bag and so on and so forth.

   14. JRJoe Rogan1:08:16

       Now, CrossFit, to, to circle back around to that, what do they do that you feel... Y- you said there's a lot of good things they do, they get people moving, they introduce people to all these different exercise routines. What do you think they do wrong?

   15. PTPavel Tsatsouline1:08:32

       Joe, I don't wanna pick on CrossFit. This so-called metabolic conditioning has been around since 1975 at least, when Arthur Jones coined that term, you know, the guy from Nautilus?

   16. JRJoe Rogan1:08:42

       Mm-hmm.

   17. PTPavel Tsatsouline1:08:42

       That's when he would... people go through a circuit of machines going, y- you know, going one after the next. And I'm sure it's been around even before that. I would just do things totally different. So there is no point in, there is no point in me trying to criticize, criticize a different system. I'm just telling you this is what the science says and experience says is how you should be doing it.

   18. JRJoe Rogan1:09:03

       Mm-hmm.

   19. PTPavel Tsatsouline1:09:04

       And, uh, I think that... uh, there are a lot of great people in CrossFit, and I just wish, you know... Power to them.

   20. JRJoe Rogan1:09:11

       You would just do it, the, wha- like, what you're talking about, with longer rest periods, d- different sort of, uh, training approach, and...

   21. PTPavel Tsatsouline1:09:19

       Okay, let's say that you're training for the CrossFit Games.

   22. JRJoe Rogan1:09:22

       Okay.

   23. PTPavel Tsatsouline1:09:22

       Let's say that's your goal, right? What you would do is, uh... name some CrossFit exercise. Let's say wall ball, okay? Let's say they throw the ball against the wall. Good exercise. You do this thing with this wall ball for 40 minutes, like I told you. And you can incorporate a second exercise in between, just in between. Stick it in there. So let's say you do a wall ball, you throw this a few times, walk around, you do a set of push-ups. Let's say five to 10 reps, and you do this for 40 minutes. Why 40 minutes? It doesn't always have to be 40 minutes, but pretty much we know if you can sustain it for 40 minutes, it's not gonna be overly glycolytic. So we just kind of know that. I'll give you another example. Let's say burpees, right? You can do a burpee, but time it in a way that you can keep doing burpees for 40 minutes. So you do a rep, walk around, do a rep, walk around, or even break it up. So you do these different CrossFit-specific, competition-specific exercises in this particular manner, where you're able to s- sustain it again for 40 minutes. Then, closer to the competition, you start, uh, doing what in track is called peaking. So when you're running, let's say 400 meters or 800 meters, athletes when they train in the off season, they train largely aerobically. Even though their distances are shorter, they're still not trying to trash themselves. But we do know that even if you develop your mitochondria, if you do it correctly, and suddenly you throw yourself in an acid bath, your body's gonna be unpleasantly surprised. So what you need to do is you need to model that. So what's gonna happen is a couple weeks before the competition, once a week, you would pretty much... it's like a s- something similar to the competition, like a WOD or whatever. And this will accomplish several things. One is it will upregulate your buffers. So your body produces baking soda pretty much to cancel out the acid, and it's a very rapid adaptation. It's very easy to get. Just two weeks, you got it. And in addition, you also upregulate your glycolytic enzymes, which you also want for competition. And again, they're very quick to develop, very quick to lose as well. So finally, there is such a thing as heart and respiration rate modeling. So which pretty much means that you're gonna be sucking wind, and if you're not used to sucking wind, it's not gonna feel good. Your diaphragm's gonna spasm and not so good. So the purpose of peaking is to get yourself in kind of a simulated competition situation where the acid is high enough to make your body adapt to it, which adapts fast, and to make yourself, um, comfortable with har- high heart rates and breathing. So that's, that's the summary. That's pretty much how track athletes train for middle distance.

   24. JRJoe Rogan1:12:40

       What do you do now? Like how... first of all, how old are you?

   25. PTPavel Tsatsouline1:12:43

       20.

   26. JRJoe Rogan1:12:44

       You look great.

   27. PTPavel Tsatsouline1:12:45

       Thanks.

   28. JRJoe Rogan1:12:46

       (laughs)

   29. PTPavel Tsatsouline1:12:46

       (laughs) Thank you. Great haircut too.

   30. JRJoe Rogan1:12:49

       Thank you.
6. 1:15:00 – 1:30:00

   Um, one of the…

   1. PTPavel Tsatsouline1:15:00

      special training. Special means sport-specific, pretty much. So the general strain- general training can be strength, can be something else, gives you foundation for everything else, and it's characterized by high degree of carryover. So, for example, if you decide to do barbell squats, you know for a fact that you're gonna jump higher, you're gonna run faster, you're gonna hit harder, and so on and so forth. If you decide to go leg extensions, you can be sure that you're gonna get better at leg extensions. That's it. So, general exercises are the ones that are fairly simple to perform and hibyou the- give you the greatest possible carryover. So, that's what you do. And then after that, you start adding in more specific stuff. So, let's say that, you know, you want to increase the number of chin-ups you want to do. Well, you gotta do chin-ups. So, that's a specific practice. Absolutely. So, chin-ups are great.

   2. JRJoe Rogan1:15:55

      Um, one of the things that I noticed that I thought was really weird was, when I started doing kettlebells, things that I wasn't doing, I got stronger at.

   3. PTPavel Tsatsouline1:16:03

      Yeah.

   4. JRJoe Rogan1:16:04

      Like, I wasn't doing dips for a long time. Like, I, I didn't do them for months and months, and I was just doing kettlebells.

   5. PTPavel Tsatsouline1:16:10

      Mm-hmm.

   6. JRJoe Rogan1:16:10

      I was just doing cleans and presses, snatches, swings, uh, a b- bunch of different, uh, squat protocols, overhead squats.

   7. PTPavel Tsatsouline1:16:16

      Mm-hmm.

   8. JRJoe Rogan1:16:17

      My dip went through the roof.

   9. PTPavel Tsatsouline1:16:19

      Awesome, dude.

   10. JRJoe Rogan1:16:19

       But, but it was so strange. It was like this-

   11. PTPavel Tsatsouline1:16:21

       We call this the what the hell effect. So-

   12. JRJoe Rogan1:16:23

       Oh.

   13. PTPavel Tsatsouline1:16:23

       ... that type of carryover, some of it we can understand, some of it we can explain, uh, some of it we can't. But yeah, we've had the kettlebell swing, for example, increase the performance of world champion powerlifters and top marathon runners at the same time. It's a very bizarre thing. And again, some of it I can decipher. Some of this I can't. But hey, we'll take it, right?

   14. JRJoe Rogan1:16:44

       What do you think is going on there, if you had to guess? 'Cause ...

   15. PTPavel Tsatsouline1:16:47

       Okay (sighs) . So it's a number of different things. One is, um, the type of, the type of breathing patterns that we use, for example, for endurance, that, uh, for en- that helps strengthen endurance. So we use this pressurized breathing. That increases your strength on exhalation, so that pretty much increases your strength at any kind of i- exertion, whether it's punching or lifting. And at the same time, we are also training our muscles that ... inspiration muscles, inhalation muscles as well. And so developing, developing these muscles is really important for your performance. So, that just one of the aspects. In other aspects is the ... Well, this is kind of interesting. Uh, Mr. Haney was, uh, a coach for Donnie Thompson. Donnie Thompson is, he, uh, broke the 3,000-pound total record in the, in powerlifting some years back. So I'd known D- Donnie for some time. So Donnie kept hurting his back, and his deadlift was stuck. Uh, so we met. I showed him some kettlebell stuff. He started doing that. He invented couple of cool things of his own as well. So nine months later, he added about 70 pounds to his deadlift, 100 pounds to his bench press, set the total record. And what's, what his coach said, interesting, he said, "Kettlebells work the muscles without killing them." Which is kind of interesting.

   16. JRJoe Rogan1:18:14

       Mm-hmm.

   17. PTPavel Tsatsouline1:18:15

       So, it appears to be that the particular stimulus that you have, uh, it's, um ... There's always a positive and there's always a negative when you're training, right? So there's something good that's happening. There's also something that's holding you back. You have to recover. So, it seems to be the nature of, uh, whatever things that happens within the muscle is positive more than negative. And I think part of it is very well-dosed ballistic loading. Uh, the body adapts to it extremely, extremely well. Part of it has to do with the particular training protocols we have, because we produce the right amount of acid, but not too much acid. A lot of, um, trainees in the kind of a pop fitness world, they're just enamored with burn. Like, "Oh, go for the burn."

   18. JRJoe Rogan1:19:04

       Yeah.

   19. PTPavel Tsatsouline1:19:05

       Fred Hatfield, Dr. Fred Hatfield had a great line. So, Hatfield was the first lifter to squat 1,000 pounds in competition, and he was just a brilliant sports scientist, br- brilliant coach. He said, "Do you like burn? Light a match."

   20. JRJoe Rogan1:19:20

       (laughs)

   21. PTPavel Tsatsouline1:19:20

       And so-... people are just enamored with the burn, so again, the loading protocols we have is such that you have the right amount of that, of that stimulation, not excessive. Because what happens, you have too much lactic acid.

   22. JRJoe Rogan1:19:31

       Right.

   23. PTPavel Tsatsouline1:19:32

       Is, here's what happens. Well, many, many things happen. We don't have the time to discuss this on the show, but most of them are really rather negative. Some positive, most of them rather negative. But for sure, they, uh, they make you more, it makes you more sore, for sure. People like to say, "Well, soreness is just caused by eccentric loading, and that's it. Has nothing to do with lactic acid." Well, eccentric loading does contribute to that, absolutely, but acid does as well. It doesn't literally burn holes in your muscle, but it does stimulate lysosomes, something kind of eats up defective components of the cell to function, and you also have this spike of free radicals. And so that free radicals, they damage cell membranes as well. So with what we do, we try to ... And plus there's other stuff happens, like body pro- starts producing ammonia, which is toxic, and, uh, depletes your ATP. So all those things start going. They're just really sideways. So I think the nature of what you do with kettlebells, especially if you use the correct protocol, is you just optimize this metabolic, uh, metabolic environment to get exactly what you want. But there are some other things, too, like in your case, for pressing and for dips, I challenge anybody to find a pressing exercise that's, uh, biomechanically more perfect for the shoulder than the kettlebell military press. It's perfect. Range of motion is perfect. Great stretch, great contraction, great ... Just absolutely perfect. So some weight we get, some we don't, but hey, what the hell, if facts will take it, right?

   24. JRJoe Rogan1:21:08

       So w- what do you spend your time doing these days? Do you spend your time teaching seminars, coaching people, like, writing books? What do you, what do you, what's the ...

   25. PTPavel Tsatsouline1:21:17

       All of the above. So, uh, I, I am staying, I'm working on, uh, I teach some special events for StrongFirst, which is my company, the School of Strength, so I teach seminars like Strong Endurance, The 2nd Win and so on. I write books, and I do some consulting. But what I really am trying to do is I'm trying to build StrongFirst, you know, the School of Strength. My vision is that more people want to become stronger, and strength will become cool. Strength will become important, and I'd like to see that, um, across decades, really. I'm not a-

   26. JRJoe Rogan1:21:59

       You don't think strength's cool now?

   27. PTPavel Tsatsouline1:22:02

       Among a small portion of the population.

   28. JRJoe Rogan1:22:05

       Do you think that can actually change?

   29. PTPavel Tsatsouline1:22:07

       I hope so. I don't know. I hope so.

   30. JRJoe Rogan1:22:09

       Uh, why would it change?
7. 1:30:00 – 1:30:22

   Section 7

   1. PTPavel Tsatsouline1:30:00

      fast fibers that I told you about, anti-glycolytic training, and, um, there's cold. So those are the stimuli, the primary stimuli, for the mitochondria. So probably for nutrition, the same thing, they should look for more things that work for everybody. And then, and kind of on the margins, try to fool around with, um, customization.

Episode duration: 1:45:48