Tendon Secrets BOOK

Today what I’m going to share with you, I believe, is potentially the most important lesson that any strength coach, any athlete can learn. I wish I’d learned more about this. I wish it had been a key subject.

I wish there'd been a whole semester about it at university because it really is at the foundation of performance and the key to why there are so many injuries athletes are suffering.

To overcome tendon issues is really a true blessing and gift.

A break dancer jumping on one hand is an example of extreme tendon ability!

Extreme tendon ability.

Strength can't do this.

There's obviously balance and skill involved in this as well but for the most extreme performance, extreme tension is necessary, and the tendons are going to deal with that tension.

Stefan Holm, the highest jumper, relative to his own height, measured on a high jump. There may be some bigger jumpers in the dunking world or the parkour world.

He has amazing fluency!

Watch the video to see the ease with which he's getting over these targets.

No amount of powerlifting is going to facilitate this.

Yes, we need to strength train but the tendons are essential for this.

It's just not possible without extreme tendon ability.

Phenomenal.

Relative to his body height.

The highest jumper in history.

181 centimeters.

He’s not meant to be able to do that!

How can you do that?

Let's take it to the other end of the spectrum, with heavy athlete, Werner Günthör. I watched this in my early 20s, put onto it by Hayden Knowles. He gave me the VHS to watch and I watched it a bunch of times. Seeing a big guy like this, fluid in his movement.

Now, he was a shot putter. There's a huge emphasis and huge importance placed on tendon ability. Even the best powerlifters, the slowest powerlifters, the heaviest powerlifters, and powerlifters wearing suits, value this ability to store energy in the tendon and release that energy.

This is a big guy. This is what we need to be aiming for with heavy athletes. They still should have that tendon ability.

If we can place it as a priority, if we can understand its importance, then we can start to deal with it better. Extremes of tendon ability and really, we need to be considering fascia, ligament, bone, all of these structures need to be able to deal with extreme forces. They're all adaptable but they adapt much more slowly than muscles.

Here, we've got Devon Larratt. He goes through his whole regime preparation for arm wrestling. This is how he trains. He's done more than 80-kilo partial curl and he talks about training the bone. He talks about getting creaking in the bone, where the bone is literally, considered breaking. You can feel it on other wrestlers.

Interesting, he's training three times a day in preparation when he's got something coming up. Sometimes in sets of 50, sometimes in sets of three.

These are the extremes of tendon loading, ligaments, fascia, and bone. How much can these structures adapt? How should we be training them? More questions than answers.

The man himself, knees over toes guy, Ben Patrick, jumping, depth jump off the ladder.

It's all the bones of the feet, as well as the tendons and the ligaments. The jump height is based on the tendons, the ability to receive all that force going through all of those structures.

You might be able to squat, someone might be able to squat three times body weight, four times body weight. The forces will never equal. The forces, the instantaneous forces, in something like, that jump.

You'll see even with bouncing these weights, when he's got, 60, 70, 80 kilos on these pulleys, and they're jerking and bouncing. Then the momentary force that's there is extremely high and only tendons, only connective tissues can deal with these things.

Tendons are where elite performance happens, then how does it all mix together? If tendons are the foundation for extreme performance, how we look after those tenants is what we're also going to answer in this one today.

Tendons. Let's think of them as adaptive springs. If you look at the foam on the left, the memory foam, if we look at the natural latex on the right, maybe this is a trained tendon versus an untrained tendon.

With the trained tendon being on the right, the ability to give back and to utilize the force that is being received is what we really need to be able to develop.

It's then muscles and momentum that are going to load these springs. If we accept the tendon as being a biological adaptive spring, then it's muscles or momentum that are going to load those springs.

If we look back to the Stefan Holm example, he doesn't necessarily have to have amazing acceleration and deceleration, he wouldn't have been terrible, but he doesn't have to be amazing in those things because you can slowly build up to the launch in the high jump.

When momentum is allowed even on 100-meter sprints etc., we'll see some of the guys are quite thin, that's because they don't need to be able to stop and start.

The more we need to load the springs ourselves and the less that we can allow momentum and gravity to load the springs, then the more muscle we need.

For a shot put, more muscle is needed. For weightlifters, more muscle is needed. The tendons are always still the foundation for extreme performance. We need that tendon ability. When we just muscle the weight, that's why bodybuilders can't perform much in jumps and weightlifting when the tendons are required because of that tendon ability, they're on that memory foam, and the bodybuilder is the memory foam. The phenomenal athlete is that natural latex.

As a strength coach, like Charles Poliquin, who put a lot of muscle mass on people. He gave them the ability to load these springs. Then, they already had healthy springs because they were already competing at the highest level in their sport. Adding muscle to them, helped them to load abilities that they already had.

Now, there are other coaches. If you look at the Marinovich System, that is very tendon-focused.

You still want to be very physics focused. You want to look at the hardware versus the software. There's training them, that's just software training, that's kind of crap. It's kind of dense.

Men run faster than women on average. 16-year-old boys run faster than 14-year-old boys. This is because of force. This is because of muscle. This is because of the ability to put load into these springs.

We always want to tend towards those qualities.

Both of them are extremely important but we have to look at how much can momentum contribute to this. If momentum can contribute a lot, then we don't need that much muscle but if the body has to get it done to initiate the loading into the tendons, then we need the muscles.

Reversal strength is then the key. Muscle and tendon work together to reverse loads.

Amortisation. The transition between the down and up, between the eccentric and the concentric, is both the killer and the king. It's where things snap and it's where greatness comes about.

Amortisation. That transition between the down face and the up face between the eccentric and the concentric. That's where champions are made or lost.

Can you do it with really light loads?

Can you do it with really heavy loads?

It depends on the sport. Which abilities we need to be better at, but that ability to transfer load, to stop it, and to reverse its direction, that is human movement, human ability. That is the ability to sprint at high speed. That is the ability to pull a massive weight overhead and then get under it and stand up with it.

If we have more time to produce the force, then muscle can play a bigger role. When there's a fraction of a second, so looking at top speed running extremely short ground contact times, it's going to be very tendon dominant.

As we go from the 100 meters, where the acceleration phase is still a big part of the race and very important, athletes will get lighter as we go from 100 meters to 200 meters to the 400 meters. the 400-meter.

The 400-meter runners are more slight because they're relying more on their tendons, they can't afford to be carrying as much muscle, very short ground contact times and they have to rely on tendons. They can't rely on muscle.

The more ground contact time there is, the more load tolerant they have to be, and the better dealing with loads people have to be.

When there's a lot of change in direction, even soccer players have to be built thicker than high jumpers or long jumpers or even generally than 400-meter runners, because they want to be able to stop and start and if you look at the best physicality in soccer, Adama Traore, Messi Ronaldo, they're not super skinny, they're not massive bodybuilders, but they have a decent amount of muscle mass in their legs because they need to be able to start and stop. They need to be able to load their own tendons and the muscles are what load the tendons.

The more ground contact time we're allowed, the more muscle and the more strength is going to play a role.

We must work out how to work, how to load them more.

If we know that they're so important then how are we going to load them up?

If they are healthy, what are we going to do with them to get the most out of them?

Strength muscle, that's what loads the tendons. If we have healthy tendons, then getting more and more muscular force, more output from the muscle, and more muscle recruitment, whether that means more mass or not, its a separate decision and it depends on other factors.

The ideal body composition, if you watch the hardware versus software lecture you get a better understanding for that. If the tendon is healthy then we want more and more force to be produced from the muscle.

Momentum is loading the tendons. Momentum takes time.

Strength can be created instantaneously and that's why we want that muscular force to be able to contribute as well.

1. “Some people's tendons just can't take the volume required for bodybuilding.” I heard this from various “leaders” in bodybuilding coaching. This is an idea that's been thrown around quite a lot. I consider it for myself or maybe that's it, maybe I just can't handle the amount of volume that is required to build, to natural muscular mass limit, my muscle mass ceiling getting to the natty number type thing.

Maybe I can't handle the amount of volume that's required. This is a limiting belief.

Let's challenge some of these limiting beliefs around tendons.

I don't believe that's true. I just think we don't understand, we haven't understood how to look after tendons, how to manage tendons and that's what we're going to go through so that we can overcome this limiting belief number one.

They've just worn it out.

No, these were biologically adaptive organisms, if we're given the right stimulus, the body will repair itself, and it will regrow.

Ben is a great example of this, knees over toes guy, six surgeries on his knees, now jumping, dunking, and training day in and day out with performance levels that are equal to or above many elite professional athletes.

When he was considered to have no genetic potential, called the “old man”, unable to get anything done. To be able to even get on the court to play college basketball, was a real challenge for him. He missed out on so much opportunity because he couldn't get it done as far as repairing tendons.

Now his ability shows that we can adapt, we can return, it's not about mileage, it's about getting the progression right.

If we can force adaptation or encourage adaptation in the right direction, then we can get to where we want to go to.

3. Another key factor here for the tendons is that if it fits your macros mentality, like any food, as long as you get enough energy, you'll be fine. When we're looking at tendons when we're looking at connective tissue quality when we're looking at the bone quality when we're looking at muscle quality. It matters what those things are made out of.

Every structural engineer is concerned with the quality of the materials. It matters biologically, the quality of materials that are being used. 

Try making an amazing world-class athlete out of rice bubbles and pop-tarts. People want to say it doesn't matter as long as the macros are right.  Eat soy, and protein, live on soy, and oil, and live on high fructose corn syrup and see what happens.

if you choose those three macros. If that's all you need, hit your macros, then do that and see what happens. 

You're going to die. You're definitely not going to have high-quality connective tissues and performance.

If you take the thing to the extreme, then you start to get closer to the truth. If you go to that extreme of a very bad diet and you see what happens at that point, then the opposite is probably also true.

If you put exactly what the body needs if you got it perfectly right, would you increase the integrity of, the quality of the tissues, of course, you would.

Our ancestors all knew this as well and other animals instinctively eat for their health and for their bodies to repair themselves.

4. If you eat a lot, you're going to get what your tendon needs.

This is kind of the same concept. Just eating a lot of food doesn't mean you're getting what your tendons need. The tendons need glycine and proline. Some people talk about vitamin c as being key.

It's a bit confusing with vitamin c, but there are certain things that connective tissues are made from - tendons. We need to put those things in the blood if they're going to make their way into the right tissues.

It matters what we eat and often this isn't part of the message. It is becoming more well-known and it's good that researchers are finally agreeing with what Weston A. Price and nutritional experts have been saying for decades from a traditional health understanding.

The best of sports science is preaching this over the last couple of years. I’m talking about collagen and gelatin and glycine proline.

5. The idea of resting, the idea of ice, the idea of traditional strength training being the solution or just managing load, are not the only solutions.

They can also be a negative. Generally, if rest doesn't work straight away, then tendons kind of get stale and they need that freshness that comes from fresh blood in the area.

So rest, if it doesn't work initially, it's probably not going to work.

Sometimes, if something's very acute, if it's the first time it's been aggravated then it can be given a couple of days to recover.

For sure, relative rest is important. We're going to go through how to give relative rest without complete rest. The tendon doesn't become stale and stagnate with damaged cells that aren't being cleared.

We now know that ice is not really part of the solution. Slows down the healing process, and stops the natural healing and inflammation that should be coming to an area when there's been damage.

Strength training and squat bench deadlift are not the solutions for tendons. It is a huge part of the problem and just trying to find the magical amount of the wrong stuff to do is what load management is about, if you're doing the wrong stuff if you do less of it, then that will, to some degree help, but let's just actually do the right stuff. Let's understand what's going on and let's improve it.

Load management definitely has a role to play but we need more dexterity and control and that's what we're going to get as we go through more of the tendon solutions here.

6. Lifting fast isn't needed for maximum strength. This is kind of a limiting belief.

People think, as long as you're getting strong, everything's going to be okay. Just do the heavy strength work when it's really the fast stuff and Amortisation, the ability to reverse loads that will prepare the tendon for high loading and also facilitate elite performance.

Let's look at the properties of the tendon.

1. The first thing is the viscoelastic quality of tendons.

Viscoelasticity is like if you dive into the water and you land flat on your belly off a three-meter platform, you're going to have a rare very red belly. It feels like landing on concrete.

If you land from 10 meters like that and land straight on your head then you could have a serious injury.

With extreme speed and loading, it's basically like concrete, that's what our tendons are like, they're very hard with extremely fast loading but if they're loaded slowly, kind of like water, they displace.

Tendons are like this, that's why the very high-speed stuff is where they're challenged the most in a high load.

2. The concept of creep. Tendons creep. It's like if you wear a t-shirt and you stretch the t-shirt, there's a certain amount you can stretch it where it'll go back, and then there's a point beyond that where it's not going to go back, where it just starts to change the t-shirt.

Tendons have that quality of, with enough load and enough time, they deform and stay in that newer shape and that's something that we need to research more and understand more, but it appears as though there is magic in initiating creep with heavy loads and time under stretch in tendons. Something is happening to those tendons. Most likely they're just being challenged and becoming thicker, becoming stronger.

We're seeing it over and over again within the ATG system where the tendons are being loaded. We're gaining new range and they're being challenged and then without much jumping practice or no jumping practice, people go back on the court and they jump higher than they could before.

The tendon has improved its ability, they're stronger but then, not only do they not get the pain, but they can actually perform better now.

At some point, you want to be able to do both, of course, you want to still have some jumping practice or some top-speed running practice that uses the tendons but there's something going on with this process of heavy loading under stretch that is doing good.

The creep is not infinite, you can't just stretch and stretch and stretch the tendon and the tendon just becomes long and saggy, that doesn't happen. That can't happen. Even if you look at some of the most mobile athletes, whether you look at people like Klokov and Ehab and their extreme power despite being extremely mobile or look at the rhythmic gymnasts who have contortionist ability but they're still athletic. They can do flips and all those sorts of things, so it's impossible to stretch to a point where you lose power.

Maybe there are fractions here and it's an interesting question to propose at those extremes of contortionism. Maybe there is a loss of power but maybe there isn't. It seems more like, there isn't than there is, even at those extremes.

3. The other thing that tendons do is attach hard surfaces to soft ones.

The muscle is soft, the bone is hard, and in engineering, that's a very difficult feat. If you're going to attach a hard surface to something soft and then apply a lot of force to it, that's a very difficult feat.

That's why the tendon is generally the site of injury and it's really the key, the focus of where elite performance is created/generated.

Understanding how to manipulate tendon, how to look after the tendon, is really at the heart of elite performance and we're trying to support this structure that has a very difficult task to do, to attach the bone to the muscle and there are smooth transitions between where the tendon becomes bone and where the tendon becomes muscle.

The cells are kind of intermingled but it's a difficult thing.

It's also important when we look at tendons to consider baseline health. We know that glycation and blood sugar fluctuation is a big risk factors in tendon issues.

I believe that for myself with the tendon issues that started for me in my pre-teens, I think I had my first tendon overuse, and bone injury at 10 years old and basically, I’ve had some sort of tendon-bone issue ever since then. I’ve always loved sport. I’ve always been fairly competitive and gone 100 percent at things.

I believe that blood sugar issues were a huge part of why I’ve always had those issues.

Lymphatic system challenges toxicity in the system are also part of this problem with tendons. We know that when people take antibiotics, they can also have an increase in Achilles tendon rupture risk and inflammatory. Anything that interferes with the inflammatory response and the immune response is going to impact tendons as well.

We need to look at this holistic perspective as well. Make sure there's enough protein in the diet and enough collagen. As I’ve said before, glycine-rich foods. The liver needs to be healthy.

Using fasting and carbohydrate manipulation can really be important things to improve tendon health and move things around inside the lymphatic system. A sauna can be good for this. Hot cold can be good for the lymphatic system and skin rubbing brushing techniques. The gua sha and a lot of those sorts of fat tools and those things are related to moving around the lymphatic fluid that bathes the tendons.

I’ve heard of people having autopsies on and when a chronic tendon issue exists on autopsy, the tendon is like gangrenous green. Just sludgy and yuck.

The idea of moving fresh fluid into the area. They have a very low blood supply. You're trying to get blood around that area but moving all the lymphatic fluid is a key part of potentially healing and overcoming these things.

We want to do as many things right as we can.

To challenge our tendons, we're going to challenge them with high-speed movements, with reactive movements, with things that are very heavy, mechanics and joint angles are also going to challenge tendons if we're loading them from angles that they're not used to or not designed for and that's going to present a challenge.

Spikes in the volume are also going to challenge tendons.

Using very low loads can be a way to regenerate the tendon and support the tendon and not challenge it, but that seems to be better than rest and is low loading.

If you look at the Westside Barbell System, they will encourage their athletes to do 300 triceps extensions each day, and 200 abandoned hamstring curls. They have these baselines of activity sled dragging, reverse hyper, these baselines of activity that are all kinds of elastic movements in a way creating circulation, and regenerating.

The high-speed stuff, the reactive stuff, this is what's going to challenge, what's going to flare up tendons. If the tendon is sore, something probably happened along these lines.

In the short term, to reduce the issue, we want to apply heat. The body will heat naturally to bring life into the area to encourage healing.

We want to support with circulation, bringing circulation to the area through things like blood flow restriction training. This is very light, short range of motion or concentric dominant and short range.

If you watch the athletic range series, that kind of movement will bring life into the area. Stop doing what hurts is obviously part of the solution, but don't stop doing everything in that area generally, tends to get a better result.

Long term, we want to look at the muscle-tendon length. If we can improve the muscle-tendon length, then that seems to be alleviating a lot of issues. When people are able to do their human knee extension and to be able to get into those positions and nothing tears and the strength is there and the tissue tolerance is there.

Then the tissue tolerance tends to be higher for other activities as well.

By getting to the strong in those lengthened positions, we often undo or create more surplus of tendon ability. We can get out and do other things.

Lengthening the antagonist, the opposite muscle.

If there is an issue with the knee, then we should also look at what's going on with the hamstring, what's going on with the glutes, what's going on with the calves, and what's going on on the other side of the body.

The knee tendons will have to work harder if the hamstrings are tighter. If you do take this to the forearms: forearm issues, golfer's elbow, very common people get into handstands or muscle ups, and oftentimes the issue is that the extensors because the back is getting so tight there's always this resting tension.

There's constantly too much tension in the forearm flexors and that's part of the issue of why we get this golfer's elbow. If we can take some tension out of the extensors or rebalance the joint, then we can alleviate some of those issues and this is the foundation of the structural balance system that Charles Poliquin popularized and that is used very well within the ATG system.

If you can lengthen the antagonist, then you get better muscle activation of the agonist but you're also going to have healthier tendons on the other side.

Going lighter and going slower on the more irritating movements is also a way to be able to avoid the issue and then gradually progressing with load, gradually progressing with speed to get back to what you really want to be able to do it.

Changing the mechanics or selecting different movements can also be part of the solution depending on what can be changed. If you're an arm wrestler, then maybe you can change your techniques, especially while you're dealing with the injury.

If you watch some of that, I watch some content from Devon Larratt that was there. Devon Larratt, the guy that I showed earlier, the arm wrestler and spoke about it. “I had this injury, then I had to learn to wrestle in a completely different way so that I could still wrestle.” but that didn't damage the area that he had damaged before.

He learned a completely different set of mechanics to be able to overcome the injury and then he gradually overcame that and he became a better wrestler. He didn't stop arm wrestling and just found things that he could do that didn't cause aggravation and then got back and was better than ever before.

Heat can come from external sources. Pumping the muscles below as well.

For knees, pumping the tibs and pumping the calves can really help with knee pain.

People who have shoulder issues, pumping the biceps and triceps.

If you have elbow issues, pumping the forearms can help.

Most people will notice that that makes a really positive difference.

We're always looking for what we can do that's going to get us back online. What is the most work that we can do without causing irritation or irritation that makes things worse?

If we're getting a lot more work done and things aren't getting worse then we're winning because we're going to get adaptation to the work that is done.

If it is getting worse, then we need to scale it back.

Ideally, we're getting more work done and the issue is getting smaller.

Using a lot of higher repetition, pain-free movements, as I spoke about with the banner triceps extension and the seated hamstring curls. The short-range triceps and hamstring exercises, those short-range exercises bring a lot of circulation to bring a lot of heat into the area.

Stretching the antagonist improves movement efficiency and allows you to start accumulating load. If we want to be able to get the glutes on, then we want to be able to stretch out.

By stretching out the rear hip flexor in the split squat on the left, we're going to get better muscle activation in the seated good morning on the right and that's part of overcoming the tendon issues, getting really good muscle activation.

The high volume of Concentrics.

The banded hamstring curls.

I’m going for short pauses on those ones.

You see this show of high volume of light concentric work is really the key for tendons.

In the ATG system, this is reversing knee pain.

For gymnasts, this can be tendon circles. They call them for their shoulders to help the shoulders stay healthy.

I was listening to Rutgers, one of the members of ATG/Real Movement talking about the Dutch swim team. If they do extra banded work, then they get a lot less shoulder issues.

Even though they're swimming so much and their shoulders doing so much work, by doing extra banded work twice a day, bringing circulation into the area, and keeping the muscle balance, they avoid a lot of shoulder issues.

In the Westside system, as I’ve said a number of times, the sleds and the belt work, its high volume concentric dominant light, maybe the abrasion shaking and some of these manual therapy techniques kind of have a similar effect of like flushing the area and creating some stimulus in the tissues.

If we want to have these amazing tendons, what are we going to do?

We need to progress the load. We need to progress length. We need to progress speed.

There's going to be a point with each of these where doing more becomes more of a risk and we're getting diminishing returns.

Having that foundation of daily circulation is what's going to help the tendons.

With that as the underpinning.

We can progress the load. We can progress length. We can progress speed.

As I said with Devon Larratt, he's training three times a day with super high loads in a short range of motion.

To be able to do that, you have to progress to it.

Working towards heavier and heavier weights is going to mean that the tendons are more and more prepared. If you can get to those weights without causing irritation, then you're getting to a better place.

The way the tempo that we use on the lift is also going to play a key role.

If you're lowering the weight slowly then you're favoring the muscle.

If you jerk the weight then you're going to favor the tendon and the forces are going to be much higher.

Sequencing length: athletic range - short range, mid-range, long-range, extreme long range.

Progressing from short range to extreme long range allows us to gradually develop the tendons, this is the concept of athletic range. The ATG system is the first system that I’ve seen that sequences length in this way and I believe that that is at the heart of why there are now over 2 000 success stories for the ATG system.

This is really at the heart of getting the tendons that you want. Working through and understanding the sequencing of length, progressing the weight that you're using, and then progressing speed or Amortisation we want to be able to be reactive.

With these, we're trying to get a fast transition between down and up.

I think it's 100 kilos on here, you're trying to get that down-up phase, reverse the speed of the bar.

It's 100 kilos but I think if I drop that 100 kilos off the floor into someone's foot from my back it's going to have a very different impact if I roll the bar over their foot and sit on their foot.

It's not just the weight, it's the tension we need to be looking at.

Are we lifting with high tension or are we lifting with just heavy weights on the bar?

For athletes, we want that tension because you might have 10 times body weight.

Let's listen to one of the guys in the group, Kieran talking about in downhill skiing, you're getting four times body weight on one leg, so, each leg needs to be able to handle four times body weight, eight times body weight.

Is anyone squatting eight times body weight? No.

They've got that sort of force. I think there are 50 turns. So, 50 times in like 60 seconds, was the number, and then in the slalom, it's just only possible with extreme tendon strength.

Strength training, we need to look at tension training instead and understand that it's really the tendons that need to be at least equally considered developed and they are the real foundation of elite athleticism.

If we recap the five levels of tendon ability:

We want higher repetition, short range.

These can be isometric, or they can be just slow.

Going for a long duration initially is what's going to build tolerance, regenerate, and bring new life into the area, bring heat into the area.

Prepare things if we're doing them at the start of the session.

Doing sleds at the start of a session.

Doing tons of step-ups at the start of the session.

Bring life into the area before you start to insult it.

You're going to insult the area by progressing down this list.

Going light to start with on long-range exercises.

Static stretching is an example of extremely light or light long-range work and then we can start to add load to that.

We can add speed to that and that will challenge the tendons in a slow and controlled way. This is what we do in the Knee Ability Zero.

We're working with these shorter-range movements initially.

It starts with the step-ups and then we progress towards being able to do the split squat.

Using heavy weights. We can start with heavyweights in the short-range movements and then progress to long.

This is talking about lower reps’ higher load progressing through from short to long.

Eventually, we want to be able to go fast with heavy loads.

Drop catch on your bench press.

Drop catch on your squats.

This tendon's ability to be able to execute jumps and dunks, and how heavy you need to go depends.

Things like the Romanian rhythm squats are a nice smooth way to get towards Amortisation.

Being able to transition between the down phase and the up phase, between the eccentric and the concentric, practicing that ability over and over.

Using the flywheel is a good example as well of being able to go as fast as you can.

High force and it's heavy but it keeps it slower.

Then the highest is the impulse, the five where it's really like hitting where your maximal effort and extremely short contact times with heavy loads.

Going for a dunk, going for a depth jump, or high jump, this kind of impulse activities is the highest level of tendon ability.

That's why often, you'll see elite sprinters, they'll go and be able to do Nordic hamstring curls. If you look at cheetah with these hamstring curls, you can do phenomenal hamstring, human knee flexion, Nordic hamstring curls, whatever we're calling them.

He's got phenomenal strength in that exercise. Maybe he developed through that exercise but probably he mostly developed it by just being crazy fast.

He ran a world-class 200 meters in high school and he's setting the NFL on fire.

He's already training that tension.

It's no surprise that he can do those exercises.

You can't run at the speeds that those guys can run at without the tension tolerance that they have.

We just need to progressively train tension tolerance.

We can train that through range, through heavy loading, and through speed.

We need to develop all three.

This guy's been jumping over and over and over again, got knees way over toes, extremely elastic Allen man here on the right and Devon’s extreme ability to deal with short range, force blasting, reactive arm wrestling strength like it is very explosive.

It's isometric but you've got to look at the tension. The pulses in tension are just extremely high. He's going way over body weight, where he's pulling as hard as he can, and the other guy jerks and pulls as hard as he can.

Massive explosive forces are being generated.

It's not just their arms, they're leveraging their whole bodies.

They're throwing their body weight around.

It's really phenomenal strength.

You'll see some of those guys are able to do multiple reps of lock-offs on one-arm chin-ups and things like this at heavy body weights like they're phenomenal strength.

It's because they have the tendon ability to go with the maximal strength.

Same thing with Louis Simmons and Westside Barbell System, extreme tendon ability coupled with strength training creates those extreme results.

These are the tendon secrets. I think there's still a lot more for us to discover and more for us to learn and to implement and to systemize and to know exactly what to do when for who.

But these foundations in this way of understanding tendons have progressed for me a lot over the last couple of years.

It's allowed me to train with a lot more training volume, with less niggles and injuries and I now have confidence that I can do something stupid and cause a tendon irritation and know that I’m going to be able to overcome that.

I don't have the same fear of strength training as I have had in the past.

I do think that we can really facilitate a new level of athletic performance by understanding how to systematically improve tendon function. That's the goal from today.

I’d love to hear your thoughts, biggest take-homes.

I know that most people are experiencing or have experienced some serious tendon issues/dysfunction.

It's not fun.

We want to overcome that.

I want you to have confidence that you can overcome that.

There are proactive things to do.

It's not about rest.

It's not about taking medications.

It's not about just hoping that things are going to get better.

We have to be proactive, and systematic, and the body will respond to the right stimulus.

We just need to understand what that stimulus is and be able to deliver it effectively.

There are now over 2000 case studies with ATG Online showing that this system really works.

I believe that the way that ATG deals with tendons is a huge part of why those case studies are coming about.

Yes, we do need long periods of rest.

Tendons are slow to adapt.

It takes months for the tendons to catch up with training if you go very hard.

If you look at Devon in that example with the arm wrestling, after arm wrestling for the next week or two, he can't go really hard, but he does continue to train.

A lot of arm wrestlers will talk about having one or two weeks off after their arm-wrestling competitions because there's so much damage done.

We can't do this extreme higher loading of the tendons often, in Westside Barbell System, the Amortisation dominant movements, the extreme fast transitions between down and up, it's once a week.

The heavy stuff, the very heavy stuff is once a week.

Maybe because they're different qualities.

You can have two insulting sessions per week.

There's a lot more training than that.

They'll go up to 12 sessions a week, but all the other stuff is muscle dominant rather than tendon dominant.

It's only the extremely heavy stuff or the Amortisation, the explosive, the banded work which loads the tendons much harder.

That is the work that is going to take longer to recover from.

I hope you found this helpful, and I’d love to hear your thoughts.