BJ Interviews Mike Robertson: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
BJ Interviews Mike Robertson: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
Hey everybody! This is BJ Gaddour, Co-Creator and Fitness Director of Workout Muse. I’m very excited today! I’ve got a special guest, Mike Robertson of iFast. Well known across the country as a very accomplished Power Lifter, Strength Coach and well known Corrective Exercise Guru. So Mike welcome to the call today.
Hey BJ! Thanks for having me! I appreciate it man!
It’s an honor man! I think a lot of people are excited to have you provide a lot of cool information to our Workout Muse audience. The angle we’re going to take today is bringing more of what is Mike’s specialty. He tends to get pigeon holed in this industry as kind of being the guy. Mike is being positioned as the corrective exercise guy so we are going to try to bring a lot of that to the bootcamp environment which frankly needs a lot of it. Mike and I were presenters at Bootcamp Bootcamp in Louisville, Kentucky. His emphasis was bringing correctiveness within the bootcamp and to try to change the kind of beat-you-into the-ground, make-you-tired-format of most bootcamp programs. That really needs to be addressed because people are being hurt and they are not being serviced correctly. That’s our job to take a lead on that as fellow bootcamp owners. So before we get into it, Mike can you kind of introduce your self and kind of describe your fitness background and everything else.
Sure! Thanks, BJ! It’s kind of been a little bit of everywhere and seen a little bit of everything. Coming up, I spent two and a half years working at the Division I level camp working at Boston University our athletes there. I spent three years in a chiropractic rehab based facility. Another three years doing one-on-one in-home training. Now I’m the Co-Owner of Indianapolis Fitness and Sports Training in Indianapolis. So again, I’ve seen a little bit of everything and I have a pretty good idea of what works and what doesn’t. I think the thing that I bring to the table in a lot of situations is trying to develop good, clean movement patterns regardless of whether you’re working in a one-on-one situation – such as rehab or personal training – all the way up to working in a really big group setting. At Bos State we’d have 26 girls at specific points in time with just me as a coach. I know as bootcamp instructor you guys may have as many as 30, 50, upwards of 100 people per class. I think that’s one of the biggest things that I can help people out with here today is giving them a better idea of how they can simplify their bootcamp, give people better results and get their people moving and feeling better.
Very cool! Just to add to that as well, I’m a proud owner of several of Mike’s products from Bulletproof Knees to Magnificent Mobility to Assess and Correct. They’ve really helped mold my approach to bootcamp design. Just to have you on the call is phenomenal. We’re going to talk more towards the end of the call and you’re going to learn more about Mike. You definitely want to get on his newsletter. Lots of information and content on a regular basis and killer products that you can immediately apply to your business. Whether it be bootcamp or semi-private training athletes – whatever! It all applies and it’s the most important stuff. It keeps people safe, pain-free, injury-free – then we’re talking about clients for life! So, let’s start Mike. I know you had a very humorous take on why most bootcamps scare you or make you cringe. Let’s tell that to the listener and hopefully, if anybody feels like you’re talking about them directly, they can make some changes by the end of this call.
It’s weird. I always confess that I am not a bootcamp instructor at this point in time. It’s something I want to add to the facility but we don’t at this time have the space for it in the facility. When I hear the word “bootcamp” and I see how people run their bootcamps, the biggest issue I have is the preparedness level of the person you are training. We start thinking about it when we look at the average American these days. We know they’re overweight, they’re out of shape, they don’t move very well, they’re very stiff and out of shape. Lots of times we’ll see these really aggressive means of trying to get somebody in shape. We hear bootcamp and we associate that with a killer, really intense workout. So we’ll see people incorporate a lot of distance running or plyometrics, which we know is a fantastic movement for the right people, specifically if you are training athletes. Then finally, just really advanced exercises. They are exercises that I wouldn’t be comfortable coaching in a one-on-one setting for a lot of my clients. Yet people are more than willing to have 50 or more people doing it at a time. So I think what we need to do is find a way to simplify what we do as coaches and as trainers. Instead of going to the most exotica and sexy exercise progression we can find on youtube, we need to find safe and effective exercises so we can build a solid foundation for our clients. That’s the thing that I always come back to: Safe and Effective Workouts. If we can start balancing that mix of safe and effective, I think we’re going to get the best long-term results for the clients and athletes that we’re working with.
Very cool! To share a story that sums up what Mike just said. I’ve had the pleasure and also regret – depends on the situation. I’ve seen a lot of bootcamps in action over the last several years both coaching bootcamp owners and through Workout Muse being distributed all over the world into bootcamp environments. I’ll never forget one session that I saw and basically, this is it: The session began with a 10 minute run. “Go run there and come back.” That was going to be the “warm-up”. I saw a mix of people that were in good shape and people who looked like that didn’t move in the last 10 years. And they ran! They ran there and back. First of all the running mechanics was really hard to watch. Kind of cover-your-face type of situation. What freaked me out the most was how ridiculously ostracized those overweight people were upon coming back several minutes later than the other people. The person actually started the workout before the people came back from the running warm up! Then this person progressed into random circuits like there were a couple of circuits done that were literally doing 4 or 5 consecutive burpees or pushup variations with minimal rest. Long work periods and minimal rest. The movements were competitive. The form was ridiculous and sloppy. Then they went right into doing sprints. So the people who couldn’t do basic jogging correctly were now sprinting after this random strength circuit. Then cruches, sit-ups all that flexion that you don’t want on that spine. Then the workout ended with a conglomeration of exercises with no progression. Obviously this is an extreme example, but I’ve seen it. This is in a very large park in a very popular city and there were other camps going on at the same time not too far away. We don’t want your camp to look like that! So Mike let’s talk about the 2 ways that you feel any bootcamp owner can make their bootcamp better.
Sure! This is something that I alluded to at the Bootcamp Bootcamp presentation. One thing that you can do is just make everything easier. Simplify the way you are doing things. Remember if you’re in a bootcamp setting, your campers aren’t going to get as much coaching as they would get in a small group setting or one-on-one setting. That’s okay because obviously either they can’t afford that or they don’t want that – They are comfortable in the group setting. So we start by putting them in these big groups and the best thing we can do is start by simplifying the workout. What I mean by that is for example, if we watch somebody squat chances are we know that they’re knees are going to drift way forward, their knees are going to cave in and it is just kind of how we move these days. We don’t have very strong butts or hamstrings. We are very strong in the front of our thighs. If we know that’s going to be the case, one of the simplest things we can do is to have them put a small band around their knees or have their partner push their knees inward so they have to work harder to push their knees outward. Another thing we can do is if we know they are going to sit forward on their toes or they are not going to sit back, have them squat to a box. Try and figure out simple things like that we can utilize to get our clients or campers moving better. I mean that’s one of the easiest things we can do: Try and make our job easier as a trainer or a coach and also make their job easier so they have a better understanding of how the exercise should feel. The other option we have is what I call the Ground Zero Bootcamp. This would be a fantastic way to set things up and it is kind of how I would do it if I were going to start my own set of bootcamps. We know there are just basic things about our clients that aren’t going to move well. We know they are probably going to be weak through their core and weak through their trunk. We know that their butt and their ham strings are going to be weak. We know their ankles are going to be stiff. So we take all these pieces of the puzzle and start to build a program based off of that. So this is where we can incorporate foam rolling and all of the different pieces of puzzle that we use and start to build it into a program. The basic exercises. Instead of having somebody doing walking lunges, you’re going to have them do split squats in place. Instead of having them do some sort of pushup variation, just have them do basic pushups. Start off with very simple, basic movement patterns and over the course of the 4-8-12 weeks, however long your bootcamp is – you start to build a progression into it. That’s one of the big words that I talk about a lot and BJ, I know you use it a lot. Building a progression into it. So we start out at Ground Zero, the basics. We start to teach them proper movement patterns. Then over the course of time, we flush it out until it becomes something a lot bigger and a lot more intensive. What we need to start doing is preparing our clients and our athletes at high levels. Far too often I think we assume that they are ready to do that and guys like you and I know that that is simply not the case.
Exactly! One thing that I hope everybody gets on the call today is that you should be at least 3-deep in terms of level of exercise progression with every exercise that you are programming for in your bootcamps. A simple level 1, 2 and 3. If you can, you can go 5-deep. Sometimes, one level has a level 1a and a level 1b. But you want to be at least 3-deep. 5-deep is ideal. Once you are able to do that effectively for all the basic foundational body movements and you can teach your staff to do that, if you do have staff. That alone will make a night and day different within your camp. You have to really work at it and program for it. You have to be good enough so that you’re at a bootcamp workout and no matter what comes up, for example, someone flags you over and says, “this is bothering my knee” , you will know what modification to make. You know how to regress the exercise or swap in maybe a hip-dominant movement to take pressure off that knee. This is the stuff that I know Mike is all about and we’re trying to get across to as many bootcamp owners as possible so just be an expert of progression. That alone will make you’re bootcamp so much better than anybody else around you. So I hope that everybody on the call today takes that away. When I was watching Mike’s presentation, about this concept, I’ve been developing something called MISSION: UNBREAKABLE with a Physical Therapist named Dr. K, which is pretty much… Y’know at Workout Muse we made a ton of high-intensity interval format circuits. So we cater to the bootcamp workout.
What we haven’t done enough is filling in the gaps of the corrective stretch, the self massage, the mobility activation stuff, so that’s what that product is. I was waiting, waiting, waiting to roll out this beginner bootcamp and then when I saw Mike’s presentation, I got so jacked up and I’m like, you know what, I’m not going to wait, let’s just get it started right away. I called my wife and we literally set it up for that Monday. It was a Saturday that he presented and we got it on that Monday. So, Mike, thanks for that push and it’s been phenomenal since making that shift. I think what you’ll find is that, as a bootcamp owner in particular, this will be much easier to convert people into your regular program. There’s kind of a graduation process and you can really target the coaching and the effort and the front load so that once they learn the basic movements, they can pretty much learn and handle everything in a safe way. Mike can you kind of take us through what you would program as your Beginner Bootcamp?
Sure. Everything I do is… there’s nothing isolationist in my workouts. Even if I work with Joe Blow who works on a computer all day, I still want him to move well and I still want him to know those basic movement patterns we always talk about. So anytime I developing a workout and especially if I’m doing something in a bootcamp type setting, I’m trying to engrain those basic movement patterns so I’m thinking very large or very broad scope. A basic squat pattern, basic pulling or what people would call a dead-lift type pattern, with the hips being the dominant mover. We work towards a press – a bench press is probably not the best option in a bootcamp – probably something more along the lines of a pushup with not just an upper body press but with a total stabilization exercise. We work on pulling variations, whether that’s horizontal or vertical again in a large group setting it’s a little bit more challenging so you have to be a little more creative. Two of the big ones that people are as focused on are pure or clean single leg training, especially some sort of lunging or split squat type of pattern and then good core stability base training. I put the emphasis on stability versus core movement or core strength because if you guys have read any of the work of Stuart McGill or any of these spinal bio-mechanists that are coming to the forefront now, you’ll see that mini-crunching and those kinds of variations aren’t the best kinds of options for any of our clients, let alone anybody who sits at a desk for a long period of time. So instead of focusing on crunching were we’re focused solely on the rectus abdomens, focus more on pillar holds, front planks, side planks, bird dogs and the many other variations in regard to core stability. Those are kind of the the six patterns that I talked about in the presentation or six basic movement patterns that I try to develop within a large group setting then if you’re taking people from a bootcamp setting to a smaller group setting you can get into some of the fancier stuff whether it’s a vertical press or a vertical pull down or a chin up or pull up. Some of those options are a little more challenging in a large group setting. Hopefully that gives you an idea of how I’d set it up.
One thing that was really cool about your presentation too, is that you acknowledged that there are some motor-morons out there. There are people that you can show them… like I always joke about the people that it takes them the whole workout to show them how to do it and they come back and they have totally forgotten what they just learned. So there are going to be people like that. One thing that Mike that Mike pointed out that is cool is that there are several cheat techniques that you can incorporate that force people to get into a better position automatically. Can we talk about a couple of those? Like the wall for the side pillar or the split squat. Let’s give a couple of those instant fixes in a camp to help fix with technique.
Absolutely. The two that you mentioned: the side pillar and the split squat are things that regardless of how much coaching we give a lot of people, until they can see and feel the difference between their way, which as we all know is generally not the right way, and the way we want them to do it, it just helps them feel what good positioning is. So let’s say for a side plank, what I’ll have a lot of my clients do is actually set up so their back side is against a wall and then when they press up they need to basically keep in mind that we want the back of their head, their upper back and their buttocks against the wall the whole time. That does not allow us to do some of the things we see our clients do like arching their back, rolling their head forward. We see all these different compensations. When we put them in an easy set up like that they get an idea of where their body should be in place and how it should feel when they execute the exercise correctly. That’s number 1. If you are doing side planks or side pillars simply put them up agains the wall so they have some sort of an idea of what a truly straight line feels like. As far as split squats go you see people who are really strong in their quads or their thigh are generally very week in their butts and their ham strings. When they perform a split squat or lunge you see the knee really drift out. We car argue all day whether that’s injurious or not but that’s not really the point . Instead what I want you guys to focus on is that we want our clients starting to learn how to load their butts and their ham strings. So what I’ll have them do is set up just like you would for a normal split squat, so feet split front to back and now take their front foot and put it right in front of a wall. And at that point in time, they are going to learn really quickly what it means to drop straight down. They can’t shoot their knew forward like they would in a more open setting. And if they are still cheating like that you can do something more. You can do it yourself or with a fellow bootcamper that’s maybe on a rest break. Actually have them place their hand in front of their front knee so they have some sort of kinetic awareness that my knee is coming forward and I need to drop straight down. Chances are when you have people do this they are going to freak out. They’re going to be like, “Oh my gosh! This is so much harder. I’ve never used these muscles before.” But it’s one of those really subtle techniques we can use to make our campers and our clients move better or at the very least move more in a fashion that we are more comfortable with.
Very cool. Part of what is really neat about this stuff is that people who don’t really have access to walls at outdoor bootcamps and maybe it’s hard to convince your campers to get up against a tree or a brick wall, just giving that verbal cue – and since watching your presentation, I have found that just saying “imagine that a wall is behind you and try to make contact with that wall the entire time.” That alone is resulting in prouder chests, more glut activation and more scapular retraction depression – so just the cues. If you can learn to start using the cues and speak in a bullet-pointed, quick nomenclature. Use really powerful words that give people the cue so they know right away what’s going on. When you’re working hard, oxygen is not going to the brain the way it should when they are pushing. Keep it short. Pop the chest out. One thing about Mike’s products you will see is that they really outline the cues. You want to try to incorporate those cues into your camps and start coaching stations instead of campers.
Right.
So one of the biggest mistakes I’ve seen is that there will be more than one complex movement to teach in each workout is really too much. If you’re really good at what you do and you just have this down so you can spend more time at that more difficult station but once you get that squat or pushup you won’t need as much correction there. When you’re coaching your groups you can get more accomplished and instead of having to get to everybody you can say to that entire squat group “stay on the heals, keep your eyes on the horizon and push the knees down.” That’s the benefit of getting products like Mike’s is that you’ll learn the exact cues that he uses in his sessions and taking those into your bootcamps is going to bring everything up a notch. Anything else to add to those cues or keys Mike?
You know, I kid around with some of my interns and some of the people that come to my gym. I just tell them that whenever I decide to retire, I’m just going to make sound bytes of myself because it’s the same cues over and over. Whether it’s chest out, back flat, knees out, eyes up – the same cues work over and over again. Like you said BJ, if you guys are listening in and you really want to take advantage of taking your bootcamps to the next level. The best thing you can do is purchase products, go to seminars and hang out with guys like BJ or Todd Dirkin or these guys who are running amazing bootcamps. REally work hard to find your own game and find those easy to use cues because a lot of times very simple cues work the best. if you’re sitting there and your’e trying to explain the biomechanics of the external oblique in between sets you are not going to get the desired result. So for example one of the best cues you can use and I use this with people whether they are squatting, lunging or doing a dead lift type pattern, just tell them to stay tall. And if you automatically ask somebody to think about lengthening and staying tall, immediately their abs turn on, their back has a much better contour to it. It’s just one of those very encompassing cues that works really, really well. Do your best to find really good cues that work for a lot of people and just give you a lot of bang for your buck. You guys are working for big groups of people and you want to maximize your coaching. So use your big cues and help your campers to emphasize on their technique and performance.
Absolutely man! Let’s kind of finish here with more applicable information. So the one thing that is tough in a bootcamp setting is that we popularize the 30 minute express workout. Usually at camps you’re stuck with that hour commitment and personal training is traditionally an hour and we got stuck with that format. What’s becoming more and more popular is that 30 minute workout where you can get busy professionals in and out to their jobs. But one thing we can look at adding in both before and after that workout for those who have time to do it is corrective stretching and self-massage. It makes for a better workout and encourages recovery and prevent injury especially patella femoral issues or lower back or sciatica an that’s lower back pain. Mike let’s talk about your top 3 to 5 corrective interventions that they can immediately implement into camp. Obviously that’s tough because on most humans you can start from head to toe and everybody has different issues, but which are the ones that have the most profound impact that the bootcamp owner can implement today to make people improve performance and bolster injury prevention?
Sure. Let’s start with working from the top down. Most people sit at a desk or sit in a car during their commute and they sit too much. Their shoulders are kind of rounded for ward or slouched over and their thoracic spine or upper back doesn’t move very well. One of the best things you can do is either have them stretch their chests pre workout, have them do some foam rolling or on their upper back or in between their shoulder blades and just try to loosen up that upper back. That’s a huge area. If you loosen up their upper back and that starts moving and shaking better, chafes are their lower back feels better, their neck feels better, their shoulders feel better. It’s an all-encompassing modality. Do something to loosen up the thoracic spine is number 1. Number 2 is to stretch the hip flexors. Again, we know that people are going to sit for extended periods of time and we have what’s called an active shortening. Your tissues lose length. Hip flexors are a huge issue and it’s something that regardless of the client that I work with being 10 or 60 they will perform some sort of stretching for their hips. That’s going to loosen up the back of their hips, turn their gluts on and it’s going to loosen up their back. So again, it’s an all encompassing, big bang modality. Number 3 is some sort of glut activation work. It can be something as simple as glut bridges or hopefully within the workout loading the hips, the butt and the ham strings somehow. Whether it’s a Romanian dead lift, a pull through, some sort of bedding or pulling or dead lifting pattern will make a huge difference just in moving better, feeling better and if they are athletes really unlocking some of their power. Another big one that I always reinforce is some sort of ankle mobility or calf stretching. This is one of those areas where people don’t really realize how stiff their calves and their ankles are until they try to do some sort of mobility exercise or calf stretching. Especially if you ladies are listening in and wearing high heals, that adaptive shortening can work there as well. Interestingly enough, there is actually research out there now that actually proves that if you wear heals for X amount of hours throughout the week, you see adaptive shortening in your calves and in your achilles tendon. I always try to incorporate some kind of either soft tissue work with a lacrosse ball or foam roller to work the calves preworkout as well as some sort of ankle mobility drills. Those 4 things, regardless of who I work with, are going to show up in their program in some form or fashion. It’s really to help counter act what we do all day. We aren’t in the 1800’s any more where we work on the farm all day to put money on the table. Now we sit at desks, we sit in chairs, we drive cars or trucks or whatever, but a lot of what we do now is focused on sitting. So a huge component of corrective exercise as a whole is simply counter acting those basic movement patterns that creep up on us throughout the day so when we start lifting weights and we start going into our actual exercise routine, we’re feeling better and we’re in a better alignment and as a whole we’re getting more out of our exercise program.
Very cool. Just to recap and summarize this information: T-spine mobility, possibly a chest stretch in combination with that. Hip mobility with some sort of glut activation and ankle. Awesome information. So just select one of each exercise and add those 3 components into your preworkout routine. Those 10-15 minutes before you start that workout and they will have a better warmup and a better workout. If you keep theme safe and injury free they will stay with you. The problem with bootcamp retention is so difficult for most because at some point you beat people down to a pulp and they just can’t do it any more. So everything Mike touched on today can change your program from top to bottom. I want you guys to get on his newsletter so you can continue on what he built for us today in regards to making those positive changes. Mike where can people learn more about you and regarding products and resources that they can invest in and take their business to and knowledge to the next level?
The easiest place to find me online is my website: robertsontrainingsystems.com
Again, like BJ said, I put a blog 2 or 3 times a week. I’ve recorded my bootcamp seminar and posted it so if you’re on my newsletter list you can have immediate access to it. You can download it as a webinar and see it as a presentation. I do a podcast. I’ve got tons of products for the strength coach and personal trainer that’s listening in. The blogs got a lot of information in there, essentially the last 10 years of my life. I’ve tried to put everything in there so if you guys are interested in bootcamps or small group settings, rehab or corrective exercises – there’s a little bit of everything there. So check it out and hopefully there’s some stuff that can help make you a better coach or trainer in the long run.
And they will! It is pure content at Mike’s blog and website. Go there and take advantage of those resources. Even if you’re not a bootcamp owner, if you own a facility. Mike owns one of the top ten gyms in American according to Men’s Health. He pretty much has his hands in everything that you would need to know about at this point. Once you have this stuff in place you can launch a bootcamp very simply and successfully. Mike thanks a million for your time today. This was great information and we got a lot in in 30 minutes. I will also be providing links to get back to Mike’s resources in case you trouble catching that on the recording. There’s also going to be a transcription of this interview as well. Any closing thoughts Mike?
I just want to say thanks BJ! Thanks everybody for listening in because it’s always a pleasure to work with people like you and other trainers that are serious about taking our industry to the next level. Everybody listening in, thanks a ton for your time because I really appreciate it.
Thank you sir! Awesome stuff! Again, this is BJ Gaddour with Workout Muse. Thanks again to Mike Robertson for his time today. Learn more about Mike at robertsontrainingsystems.com and we hope to have Mike as a guest at some point down the road as well. Thanks so much and we’ll be in touch!
