The Deeper Impact Of Plyometrics w/ Matt McInnes Watson
We’ve got a special guest episode this week on the Unreal Results Podcast as I am joined by the expert in plyometrics, Matt McInnes Watson. In this episode you’ll hear Matt share his unique approach to plyometric training, emphasizing the importance of breaking down inhibition and maintaining rhythmical patterns for overall health and resilience. You’ll also hear about the benefits of yielding exercises, the role of fascial fitness, and practical applications of plyometrics you can apply with your clients today. Whether you’re working with professional athletes or someone who just wants to play with their grandkids, this episode will have something for everyone.
Resources Mentioned In This Episode
Matt's Instagram
Plus Plyo's Instagram
Matt's Podcast, Hop On The Poddy
Matt's Website
Matt's Intro To Coaching Plyometrics Certification Course
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Anna Hartman: Hey there, and welcome. I'm Anna Hartman, and this is Unreal Results, a podcast where I help you get better outcomes and gain the confidence that you can help anyone, even the most complex cases. Join me as I teach about the influence of the visceral organs and the nervous system on movement, pain, and injuries, all while shifting the paradigm of what whole body assessment and treatment really looks like.
I'm glad you're here. Let's dive in.
Hello. Hello. Welcome back to another episode of the unreal results podcast special episode. I've got a guest today. I teased it in the last episode. So if you listen to that, you already know who it is, but it's my friend, Matt McInnes Watson. I'm so stoked to have him on the pod. I don't do a ton of guest episodes.
So, you know, when I do pick somebody to come on, it's like, it's because I really Resonate with what they have to share with the world and I want to get it out there and that it also Ultimately fits in this big picture of more of a whole organism approach looking at the body Um, in a way that considers the nervous system and the viscera and that kind of thing.
And so you might already know of him. He is plus Plyos, the plus Plyos guy on the, on the social medias. And um, I, uh, So you might wonder like, Oh, how does biometrics fit in this view? And this is like the beauty of why I brought him on is because it's the, for the first time listening to somebody talk about plyometrics that I felt like, Oh my gosh, he gets it from a organism standpoint of like.
The, this, our fundamental drive for survival, um, and safety in the body and how that sort of trumps everything, no matter where you come into it from, what level you come in from it from. It's always about the body, like doing whatever it needs to, to stay safe, stay safe. So I'll let him do a little bit more of an intro for himself, but, uh, welcome Matt.
Thanks for being here.
Matt McInnes Watson: Thank you for having me in. I appreciate the, uh, the kind introduction. Yeah, it's, uh, we, we were just saying off, off air that we kind of crossed paths with, with Shanti and, um, and then we'd kind of done a bit of work together and it was very quickly apparent that we spoke the same language and we saw things through very similar lenses.
So I always find that fascinating when. Maybe I don't have a rehab, you know, um, background or like, I'll meet someone else that has a completely different background to me. And then we're like, Oh, we're speaking the same sort of, you know, the same way. And it, it really, I think you're right. It goes back to starting with like a fundamental, fundamental kind of way of looking at things and saying like, how does, How does our body react to things in a very simple way, but a humanistic kind of way?
How do we react as an organism that is, like, where are our founding fundamentals? And where do they come from? And, and protecting ourself, I think is, is number one. And the more that you look at, like, more, more, the more that you observe animals, the more that you understand that that's even more heightened.
It's, everything that they do is about, survival and it's not, I know, obviously we're now, we know we live nice lives, we have curtains.
Anna Hartman: You're to survive these days.
Matt McInnes Watson: A little bit more, but ultimately, well, I found that out more and more. Um, having a, having a daughter and a baby, I'm like, Oh, like our job is to literally keep you alive.
Like the first like six weeks you're like, this is wow. This is fundamentally about you just. You know, keeping, keeping this small thing alive. And, uh, and I think it just, it always, you know, when I'm working even in like the minutia of like performance, I'm trying to piece together this plyometric workout or, you know, speed or power workout, it will constantly revert back because as soon as I see something prop up in a, in the middle of a session and I'm saying, why is that happening, but it's always going back to, is it an inhibition?
Is it a protective mechanism? And ultimately. I My I think my job is to show people how to unlock levels to that inhibition because we all have a certain level of inhibition, but we all also have the ability to stick our fingers in a plug socket and shoot ourselves across the room, right? That, that idea that the muscles are doing that to our body and not the actual electrical current, it is what we potentially can do, but we just live our lives within that inhibited form.
So, um, yeah, it's always kind of full circle for me. So it's always going back to when I'm solving problems, Where is this problem coming from? And it's always like, Oh, it has to be a technical issue. You can't fundamentally do this. And I'm like, well, sometimes you've got to look at it on the flip side.
Like, is there an inherent problem here? Problem per se, is it. Inhibitory.
Anna Hartman: The, um, enter the, what come up, what came up for me when we were talking about that is it's interesting. You know, I, I pretty much only work with professional athletes. So like super elite athletes. And I think this is like one of those things that.
Is like sometimes beneficial to them, but then also to their detriment and what leads to a lot of training errors is their brain is really good at like overcoming that inhibition before their body sometimes ready for it. Like, they're like, fuck it, like, let's just send it and their body is like, whoa, we're not ready to send it.
And so they have these little. These little messages that maybe their joints or the muscles or the connective tissue is telling them and their brain is just like completely ignoring it. And so where I would probably stop within my plyometric program or my training program, they just like grind through and, you know, So I'm oftentimes at the detriment of like, eventually that's what like ends up getting them hurt or, you know, in, in some scenarios, which, you know, and this is when you were helping me with one of my clients, it was like, he wasn't very good at speaking up when things didn't feel very good and it, and it was hard and because he's such a elite athlete, it was sometimes hard for us to like notice it in his movement patterns.
And so it was like, he was his own worst enemy most of the time.
Matt McInnes Watson: Yeah, it's, uh, you know, it's funny you, I mean, I always discuss this in, in terms of having like an athlete that, you know, you might have from like a young age, so working with, let's say a 16 year old and they're potentially moving into, you know, becoming someone that could be a professional world class athlete, and you might look at a time period and say, and you'll see some coaches throw everything, every piece of training possible at that, at least give it a couple of years.
They kind of become numb to stimuli and like Not only do you get training plateaus, but like you say you also have someone that is really capable of taking themselves to an injured place um and I think like my job is to give someone a real novel stimulus on a consistent basis so that they are very sensitive to that stimulus rather than being completely desensitized.
So it's really interesting to play with. And obviously we can always, you can take everyone to a point where that you're going to find inhibition, but you can also, you, you know, World class athletes also have that brain where it's like a crossfitter. It's like dig yourself a really deep hole and go and sit in it.
And a crossfitter is someone that's really happy to do that. And that's why they get so like catastrophic injuries. And it's the same with world class athletes. And, you know, it reminds me of athletes that have been world class. They retire and they don't do anything for a couple of years, but they still have that neural twitch in them.
And then they go and like tear a hamstring doing like the most basic thing. But it's like, it's because you're still outputting enormous forces, but your connective tissue is not ready for it at all. So it's, yeah, it's, it's that case of, it's like a fine balancing act of, We want, we don't want there to be too much inhibition, but we also don't want to be too desensitized, I think.
And that goes back to what I mentioned, and we don't have to throw everything at someone. And actually, what does it look like? Like, what are you going to give to this individual in 10 years time that could potentially be novel? Rather than getting there in 10 years time and being like, we've been doing the same thing every year for the last 10 years.
So it's like, yeah, it's a, it's a real hard balance to that.
Anna Hartman: This is true. I was saying, and I, I think too, like part of it, what we, and you kind of spoke to it as like the, with the sensitization, like when they ignore all those messages, the body, I feel like it's sometimes like the body is just like, I don't want to say it gives up, but it's just like, fine.
Like, I don't want to fight this fight anymore. Like you're always going to try to force your way and win. So I'm going to stop giving you those messages that it's not okay. And I'm just going to like do whatever you want. And That's, that's sort of like you get yourself in a very chronic, not so helpful state.
And then you're like, they're going back and repeating the training program over and over because they're like, well, this is the way that I get better is doing more and just grinding through it instead of like, what they need to do is just like step back and it's so frustrating.
Matt McInnes Watson: And it, and it even speaks to like technical ways of doing things.
Like if I revert back to like jumper. So like a high jumper or a triple jumper, the way that they create force potentially then can change as well, which is really fascinating. It's like, how much longer do you now need to spend on the ground because you're avoiding these inhibitions, but you're also doing it by just offloading things in a certain way, but it also then starts to destroy things technically.
So like the quality of your skills and the quality and the way that you're doing things within your sport also starts to diminish as well. So it's like, yeah. Your body's trying to solve the problem, but still everything's still getting worse, really. Yeah.
Anna Hartman: Yeah. So interesting. Um, well, I, I want to like, let you sort of maybe describe, I don't know how you want to describe it, but like what people.
I think fundamentally that like the whole inhibition piece like it makes sense to me and you because we've been talking about it but like that's a word probably people are not used to hearing when it comes to biometrics so like maybe like the the phase you're talking about and then like um some of the I mean all the drills all the exercises you do are good for improving the inhibition but like some of the really good like basic ones that um you That we've done, like the deep tear oscillations and yielding stuff, like how how that kind of speaks to that, overcoming this safety component and like, and getting more comfortable, especially post surgery, post injury posts, like just not feeling great.
Matt McInnes Watson: Yeah. Well, plyometrics is fundamentally about breaking down inhibition. The reason why I won't like be able, if I step out of this window on the first floor and I land, I'm not going to stick the landing and be really tall. Inhibition is going to tell me, no, no, no. You need to flex the joints. Cause if you take this, if you try to create stiffness at this sort of velocity and amplitude, everything is going to go wrong.
Um, and from a, the, the very first level is how do I protect my skull and how do I protect my vital organs? Yes. From a very, very big stance. Like that's the number one component to it. So it's, you know, it's the reason why you put your hands out in front of you when you fall because you want to protect this big, heavy thing on top of your shoulders.
Anna Hartman: Even though like cognitively you might know this is going to dislocate your shoulder. But your body would rather dislocate your shoulder than give you a concussion or
Matt McInnes Watson: Yes, exactly. So so plyometrics are are that they are How could we get you to fall out of a first story building?
Anna Hartman: Yes
Matt McInnes Watson: and not crumble and roll out of it like you see someone in parkour.
So we, well, the Russians did a fantastic job of testing how we can break down that inhibition. So it would have started from a smaller level and eventually they would have taken it to somewhere where someone's falling off of around, what are we looking at? Kind of seven, eight feet. Which is insane, by the way, because what no one thinks about when you're stood at seven or eight feet is that your head, if you're six foot, is now at thirteen.
Anna Hartman: Yeah, twelve foot.
Matt McInnes Watson: Yeah, exactly. No one thinks about that, like, you fall from seven feet, but actually your head's falling far, far.
Anna Hartman: Yeah, your brain is falling from way higher, double that.
Matt McInnes Watson: Way higher, so. So that, that really is where it's at. We have, we have so many receptors in our body that, that understand the modular modulation of force.
So when, when there's a rapid contraction within the, or, or rapid lengthening within the tissue, we have receptors that can tell us shut it down. Like don't fight this force. You're going to completely yield it. Now, plyometrics was initially created so that you could teach those receptors to be blunted a little bit.
Um, they're never going to be fully blunted because you are you can never fight completely You know break down that humanistic level of right don't fall and smash it into the floor. So It's about that. It's about breaking down that so that we can maintain Those high levels of stiffness because we know as humans.
We we're not very good We don't think the worst thing that you can tell someone to do is to move like a cat because a cat is Number one is a quadruped so they don't just have two feet to land on but they also have a big cushioning from front to back And they also have an enormous length between their forefoot and their calcaneus So they they crumple like a like a slinky does like really really well.
We don't do that Well, they have much more mobile hips. So they want to land in that soft position for us And I mean continuing movement as well not just land and then stop Right. So for humans, we want to land in a stiff position so that we can propel ourselves away. And plyometrics is that wholeheartedly.
It's about maintaining high levels of stiffness so we can use that energy to propel ourselves forward. Now, that, like I said, it can start from a really small level in terms of the amplitude that you give yourself, the more height that The more velocity you're taking in, the more that your body has to deal with that rapid stretch and that rapid stretch is what gives us that elastic energy back.
And so where I really inherited. The structure of how I plot how I Program plyometrics comes from my mentor and his mentor was part of eastern europe Um, um, he was a hungarian guy, but was also taught by the polish and the russians. So It
Anna Hartman: it's like in his blood.
Matt McInnes Watson: It's in his blood. Yeah, hopefully it's kind of, you know fed through the thread fed through that bloodline to me
Anna Hartman: I think it is
Matt McInnes Watson: And so like So Zoltan was my coach, Eric, his, it was Eric's mentor and he, he showed, it's funnily enough, so my, the best story ever about deep tear.
So deep tier is like, it's kind of like jumping, you're going to land in a really deep range of motion. Then you're going to kind of come out of that movement. A good example is like a squat jump on the spot. You're jumping up and down, you're absorbing and then leaving the ground. But this is in a whole host of different movements.
And. Eric, I remember this story from Eric is Eric had been an athlete for, for a few years up until that point. And he met Zoltan and he was like, I was a big, super strong guy. He was at a Catholic, probably weighed two 20 was six foot five, two 30, six or five and super strong in the gym. He told me that he used to like do some silly things.
It was met, met Zoltan. Zoltan was like, well, this is how we're going to train. So in the, in the autumn, the fall, he would do a lot of deep tear movements. And Eric said he did his first session. He said we were doing deep tear movements for about 15, 20 minutes. He said, I couldn't walk for almost eight or nine days after that.
So it showed straight away the inherent differences between taking that tissue through length at a slower rate within a more of an overcoming form in weightlifting, because weightlifting is exactly that. It's overcoming from the moment that you're stood there to the moment that you sit down into a squat to the moment that you stand up.
Right. Whereas the deep tear movements are completely yielding in a way. You want to allow your body to drop into that deep range of motion, and actually allow there to be slack to then be caught at the bottom and find more of a reflexive action. The reason why you don't get this beautiful bounce out of the bottom of a heavy squat is you can't find a reflex when you're, you're, when you're fighting force with force, there is no reflexive capacity to your body.
So the deep tier was about finding reflexes at deeper ranges. And Eric told me about the muscle damage that it did. And he was like, what have you done to cooling them up? Like, what have you done to us? Like, we don't like we're really strong athletes. We've been lifting weights for five years and Zoltan was like, this isn't, this isn't the same thing.
This is inherently completely different. And so how I inherited it, I went through the same experience of being like, what is the, like, I don't understand. We're doing like five exercises and I walk away like, what have you done to us, Eric? Like it's, it's so inherently different to what we're used to. And so it, it taught me a lot being an athlete in it for 10 years and having coached it now for six or seven years.
And it, It really shows to me how you can use this from really any point within a human's journey of whether they're looking to be returning from a catastrophic injury or whether you're a world class athlete. The world class athlete stuff, like, I was in track and field. Everyone spends the whole of their life in track and field, really tall and stiff.
That's what they love to do. So when we flip that mechanism, it becomes this like therapeutic way of loading the system and tissue. And it's just something very opposing to what they would normally do. So I like, it is so important for that community of athletes for me. But going back to someone that is returning from a major injury, you know, they, they come to me with this massive trauma, despite, you know, a PT or a therapist or whoever.
Has looked after that athlete returned them back from a surgery and said, all right Okay, now you can get into dynamic movement and they come to me and I'm like wow This is how much you still can't do you really cannot receive force at any form of velocity when you take it any deeper than like two inches of flexion at your hip and your knee and your ankle.
So what does it tell me? It tells me that this trauma still creates this inhibition and block, and it tells me that every time we drop you into deeper ranges of motion, you're fighting force with force. You are overcoming the force. Because I often get feedback and saying, I'm so sore the first few times of doing some deep tear movements.
When they get back into those more dynamic training sessions after surgery. And it's because I know that they've been trying to overcome, they're like so scared and they want to fight it.
Anna Hartman: Right.
Matt McInnes Watson: But as soon as it gets to a stage and obviously there's a training effect there too But as soon as they can relax It's like oh this is like not doing anywhere near the damage that it was initially doing because I was i'm not fighting that So I look at it as a bandwidth and I look at it as a bandwidth is let's just talk about it There's you know, you've got you're holding like a two or three inch bandwidth where you're dropping down into like a deep squat There's going to be a point where you find a bandwidth of space where you just really don't want to be there
Anna Hartman: Yeah,
Matt McInnes Watson: and For me it's about living in that bandwidth where you don't want to be obviously to a point where there's not necessarily pain or discomfort right but if we can get you to a point where you're like i really don't want to be like i'm almost flinchy and i'm like i can feel that inhibition in me and i'm like shaking and i'm you know i don't my body's telling me no But actually I know as the coach, I can observe it.
You're safe. You're in a fine environment. It's not, I say speed as well. It's not speed speed. It's in a controlled manner. And even some of these oscillatory movements, like you can hold on to something. I don't care whether there is something that you can stabilize your body with, but actually with those oscillations, so we might sit down and let's say it's a parallel squat position and like a standard leaping action bilateral.
Let's say that we just oscillate in that power. You're going to go to slightly below parallel and slightly above parallel. And to start with, you don't even need to leave the ground. And that's your first like, okay, cool. What's happening here is I'm starting to take it through that range. What's nice is I can build a really high volume of work there.
And secondly, I'm also getting. amazing pump of that muscle as well. That muscle is, you stand up and your legs feel like they are full of blood. So to me, if there's anything residual sit in there, it's going to completely flush that system out as well. And it normally a lot of guys also then say, God, my quads and hamstrings and glutes just felt so good the following day after doing that.
Um, so it's going to give that almost protective feeling of being like, you know what the other muscles around it that aren't maybe it's an ACL injury. And you're getting a really good quad pump from it. Normally you're going to feel pretty good the next day if it's in, in that kind of case. So it then would ramp up from not leaving the ground to leaving the ground.
And that, and that leaving the ground moment is a moment where that drop or the eccentric moment of that, um, movement is what's going to induce just a tad more velocity. And in that flight phase, we want to get an athlete to be relaxed in a way so that they're not tensing up and feeling that inhibition again.
Anna Hartman: Matching their anticipation for like, cause
in their brain, they're like anticipating the worst, which you're like, no, you've just, you, you're not jumping from 12 feet.
Matt McInnes Watson: You're exactly, exactly. So. There is always the idea as well that we need to anticipate and we need to be really stiff and tight and tense.
And actually, we know in so much just research and anecdotally, you can see it immediately. Someone that is super tense, I used to use the phrase like, rocks don't bounce. So if you are tight like a rock, you are not going to bounce. There is going to be no length to that tissue. And. If you're able to stay relaxed and then contract at the right moment and in the fastest manner possible, which the best athletes in the world do, they ramp it up the fastest and they do it in the fastest timeframe too.
And like, we're talking like 80 percent maximal voluntary contractions of the lower leg are seen in like high level plyometrics, which is insane. Like you're not touching anything and you're able to contract that muscle at that amplitude. Yeah, that's that's that's impressive and it's done in like under two tenths of a second.
It's It's rapid. Yeah, so what does it take for you to get to being able to relax and then contract at the right time because I think that's also you also go through that ebb and flow of things of Of coming from trauma living a lot of your time in a highly contracted State of trying to protect that so if I can get you to be comfortable with relaxing and contracting In more rhythmical fashions.
I just call it grease in the groove and like everything slides better everything moves more in sync everything is much more stronger in terms of the connection with the neuromuscular system. Like the neuromuscular system loves smooth connections. It likes rhythm. It likes to feel that internal beat sort of thing.
So if you can get your muscles and everything in turn to work in the same way, that's great. But if something's tense on one side and you're still trying to create that rhythm, it's just, you're just not going to feel it.
Anna Hartman: Yeah. That rhythmical pattern is like so interesting. Like you said, like all parts of our system, like just thrive off of it and like the ability to switch back and forth.
Like, like that's fundamentally like what our nervous system does with like our breath cycle, right? Like a little bit, you know, we inhale. It's more sympathetic. We exhale is more parasympathetic and what makes us super resilient and. Like best regulated is one that can switch back and forth really easily, but people get stuck in that, yeah, that protective mode and they lose the ability to switch back and forth.
And so. I mean, man, yeah, it always comes down to rhythm. And we talked a little bit before I push record about the fascial fitness world. And I think this is that feeling the guys get sometimes after the, um, you know, you said like the day after they, like, they feel so much better. And that rhythm from a fascial standpoint too, is like really what actually rehydrates the fascia.
And so I think that's what people are feeling is like, it's, it's When you're constantly in a contraction of the muscle, not, you know, like we have to kind of like think of this concept of the muscle, like, even though they're an integrated unit, there's like still separate things, right? There's the muscle cells and the muscle elastic tissue that is holding that concentric contraction when you're in a, uh, protected mode.
And when it's doing like that, it's also, it's like wringing out a towel, right? It's wringing out all the fluid from the fascia as well as the blood flow to the area. And so whenever, then, then if you do any exercise that starts to break down the connective tissue or load the joint in a way, you're not getting the flushing of the vascular system through there as well.
In addition to the actual. water content within the fascia that keeps us like, like an animal, like this, like a wonderful ability for elastic recoil to happen and for a muscle to be able to move through the phases of concentric and eccentric contraction, which makes us so efficient. And so it's just so interesting to me because I think that sometimes like, um, again, because people are so used to, Being so stiff like either they're used to being stiff because they're the elite athlete who you know Like the our elite track athletes are just used to Relying on that stiffness and they're really good at it or they're so stiff because they're untrained deconditioned and their fascia is dehydrated and so they're they have that and so it's just Yeah, like I said, it's just really interesting to me that fundamentally, even though the science is telling us, right, that, that movement is the best way to rehydrate the tissues, not massage, not any like tool, but like a rhythmical movement is the thing, but yet it's not what we go to when something feels tight.
It like, we're, we instantly, especially in the rehab world, we instantly go to trying to overcome the protective pattern with deep tissue massage, which you're still forcing and like beating things up to trying to get it to submit. Um, or you go to some sort of like massage tool or stretch, which you're trying to overcome these reflexes that are like, Again fundamentally built in to protect you and so it's like just wild to me and I did a Years ago.
I did this well when I was learning a bunch about fascial fitness and fascia One of my mentors she had really bad She had really bad arthritis in her knees. Uh, one knee was like, so like valgus, like bone on bone, like bow legged position here that you would see, you'd see her walk and be like, yeah, she's like very close to knee replacement.
She dedicated, she's a Pilates, uh, base movement practitioner and she like, Also in this fashion fitness world was like, okay, I'm going to start adding elastic recoil and rhythmical training into what I do and loading my body in this way. And she totally changed the shape of her knee joint
by remodeling the fascia in this way.
And so using that as kind of an inspiration, I, um, was like, you know what, I'm going to start tempo running in a tempo or a cadence that I know the studies have showed us are the most efficient. And if it's the most efficient, it means that it's the like, you're in your connective tissue, right? You're in that elastic recoil, which is the The 175 to the 185 beats per minute.
So I started training all these little, you know, I would do drills like little like a skip B skips type things, or a little like ankle skips. And then I eventually took it into just a greater hip separation into running. And I would run like that. And the first thing I noticed was, Whoa, the, the connective tissue disruption and the amount of like, Delayed onset muscle soreness I had just like you describing your guys adding in the deep tear and then but then what I found is not only did my joints not hurt when I ran anymore because they weren't getting the compression, right?
The body was anticipating and like a yielding that force instead of like jamming it in my joints. But my ankle mobility rapidly increased way more than any joint mobilization, any stretch, any soft tissue ever did. And so that was when I was like, Oh, and what was happening was like two things. One, I was overcoming that, you know, The, the tendency for my muscles to just be like in protective mode, holding everything on.
So the elastic components of my ankle dorsiflexion was improving. But then also I was remodeling my connective tissue that had been in such a shortened position for so long because of that holding on protection pattern that then I was able to load it in a way and it started remodeling itself. So then I kept the range of motion and it was like such a mind blowing And this is probably, you know, what you felt too.
And I think that sometimes sets people apart in the world of teaching and coaching is like you experienced this for 10 years and as an athlete before you ever started like teaching it. And like that practical experience of feeling these changes in your body is like so important. Like, cause me and you can speak all day about the.
powerful benefits of it, but it's like, even back then when I started in this fascial fitness world, I really didn't fully appreciate what plyometrics or rhythmic elastic recoil did for our overall health and wellness until I just felt it in my own body.
Matt McInnes Watson: Just, it, it's fascinating about the, the tempo of running stuff because there's, there is, everyone has their own tempo as well.
Like, I think that it, and it is in a. is in a place where there isn't that inhibition. So if, if you could get everyone to find that spot and then gradually build up that capacity to get into the, what the kind of research suggests is like the. Prime kind of cadence and stuff.
Anna Hartman: I will say that when I started it, yeah, I noticed that in my own body, like the sweet spot for me when I first started was like 162 to 165 beats per minute.
But then as I started doing it more, I noticed that I could increase, I actually felt more comfortable. And had to increase my cadence But it was like feeling that sweet spot where you don't feel the inhibition like you're like Oh, yeah, like I could like ride I could bounce on this like bouncy ball like all day long
Matt McInnes Watson: and you know what, you know, what's really telling as well as I I mean having been a high jumper I Never ever wanted to do anything Anything over like 200 meters of running, right?
And It was all because I genuinely could not run at a certain speed to be able to do a like a 5k Yeah, like plodding along I would have what I would have had to have done is my training format would have had to have been Running at like a tempo speed And gradually teach myself how to increase the distance that I could handle the tempo speed not start slow and Be able to do that 5k and gradually speed it up.
It would it would be the other way around it would be about Increasing the endurance capacity of that speed.
Anna Hartman: Exactly. That's how I did that training and it was like
Matt McInnes Watson: I could not plod I could not plod it my my calves and All the other big stabilizing muscles just blew up so quickly. Like it felt like my legs were swollen because I could not find an internal rhythm and get a good synchronization to the connective tissue.
I'd much prefer just being real bouncy and people being like, you're never going to hold that for 5k. But like, that would have been, had to have been the way that I would have had to attack it. I just cannot plod along. And I still can't to this day. Like I remember trying to do it maybe two years ago. I mean, I'm just going to do it.
I'm just going to try it for six weeks and I just, I just gave up. I was like, if I'm going to do it, I'm just gonna have to run the other way around. I'm going to have to do more.
Anna Hartman: I literally had to like have a metronome on in, in my earphones and like stay on the metronome and that's actually like when I knew I was done, like with the distance I was running as like, when I can't keep on the metronome anymore, like that is like fatigue, like.
Matt McInnes Watson: That is and That is so far forward thinking with regards to like a lot of endurance coaches as well. It's fascinating how not enough people realize the Like the the detriment of not doing something like that and understand obviously, you know You're gonna push past a certain threshold and try to maintain it but like for a lot of your training staying within a realm where your, your soft tissue and your tendons are really doing a great job.
Yeah. I always, I always go back to Mo Farah that won the five and 10 K in the Olympics. Um, and my, my coach and I used to laugh at like the endurance groups that are our track and say, those guys are running with their muscles. For five or four thousand six hundred meters and then trying to cool their tendons for the last 400 Yeah, whereas mo far has been bouncing on his tendons for four thousand six hundred meters and then can say right muscles Give me everything you possibly
Anna Hartman: yeah, and then has the energy stored to still do it Hasn't been wasting any energy
Matt McInnes Watson: just depletedly plodding around and it's because what did you see they go to the track and they'd run They were like, let's say 1500 meter runners and they're doing like back to back eight hundreds.
And you're like, look how slow this is. This is, it's nowhere near race pace, but like, yeah, that was always, that was always the way that we looked at it. It's like bounce on tendons as long as you possibly can and then call upon your muscles.
Anna Hartman: Yeah. And then like, Let your body tell you when you've had like when you've trained enough like and then rest it Which I mean, you know and we talked about that too Like how your philosophy is sort of matched a little bit of the factual fitness standpoint is like in your programming You're like one to two times a week for the more actual plyometric stuff Right.
Like when you're in the, and this is what the fascial fitness is like, when, you know, you're in that elastic recoil, energy saving mode, it's like any more than one to two times a week. And you actually probably do worse for your body when, when it comes to tendon remodeling. And, um, tendon, well, and remodeling is nothing more than like tendon building, right?
So remodeling, building, same thing, right? And I think that is a huge, huge thing that most athletes, most people just ignore because they're, we're so set in this mindset of like, no pain, no gain. And it's
like, no.
Matt McInnes Watson: Sorry, there's someone, I think that leaf blower is outside. I don't know if you can hear it.
Anna Hartman: Oh, I can't hear it.
Matt McInnes Watson: There's, and again, right. There's that, where's the sweet spot for those plyometrics. Right. So again, like, again, I play with bandwidths as soon as you go. pass too much volume for that given individual, you creep outside that bandwidth or you slide that bandwidth down to a slower model of how you're trying to achieve something.
And therefore the remodeling becomes very different. It becomes, is it more that you are overworking the muscle to achieve the same jump height? And actually what you want is you want to maintain the speed of the ground contact and Use the tendon for its elastic recall rather than just trying to grunt through a couple more reps or a whole other, you know frequency of um or an added session, so it's unfortunately, it's like less is more all the time with it, but You know, you've got to live to fight another day and where you can push certain movements and where you shouldn't.
So, yeah, it's a,
Anna Hartman: well, and this, I think too, comes down to like fundamentally understanding, like, what is like, what, like, what is the intention of each exercise you're doing? Right. Like, cause if you do look at like a week of like a sprinter, you know, like. They, you can work on starts one day and that's not plyometric.
That's like you overcoming, you know, and like creating accelerating, like that is you like creating,
right. That's more like weightlifting than it is plyometric. And so it's like, yeah, you can work on starts one day and then do plyos and a lot of your sprinting work and jumping work or, you know, whatever sport, whatever event you're in on one day.
And then like, then you're just like. Doing again, weight room stuff or like tech, you know, like postural technique stuff, like understanding too, like what each exercise is doing, which I don't think people are very good at that. And that's what, then they do that training there and they end up doing jumping or plyometric things every day.
And I even remember when I first learned. about the fascial fitness loading parameters. I would, you know, I went, I was working at exos at the time and I, we might've been called athletes performers back then. But, um, I remember going to Mark and being like, you know, I'm learning something that's like questioning as doing plyometrics four days a week.
And, you know, his argument was, Well, we're doing linear on Monday, Thursday, and lateral, multidirectional on Tuesday, Friday. And so, like, you're stressing different vectors and, like, it, which is not wrong, but I'm just like, you're playing on a very, like, I'm like, what are you doing multidirectional? Bounds or linear bounds like it's basically the same tissue.
It's your lower extremity
Matt McInnes Watson: Believe me. It's not like you've got like the lateral achilles coming in or the
Anna Hartman: exactly Exactly. So i'm like, I don't know like I think we're just doing like I think we're like We should change, like, we should change our programming app. And this is like, the, you know, the tough part, like, this is the tough part.
Like I said, when it's ingrained that this is what you do, you do flyos four days a week, but just different direction of them. I'm like, it's still flyos four days a week.
Matt McInnes Watson: You're still getting the neuromuscular stimulus there.
Anna Hartman: Yes.
Matt McInnes Watson: And, How that recovers is going to be detrimental to how you then stretch that tissue on the day that you are, you know, doing a different form, you're still going to struggle to elicit those fast contractions to pull on that tendon.
It's not going to be there. So what do you get? You get less of a pull and you get more of a muscular action and you get, it becomes slower and it is compounding. Yeah. It's just. Well,
Anna Hartman: and that's what I like appreciated too, with the yielding exercises that you have too, is it's like, those are something that to the athlete's brain feels like a plyometric.
So it feels like you're checking that box, but it, it's not necessarily, and it's so low level that you can stand to do a high volume of it without really narrowly fatiguing yourself or like eliciting a huge. Um, breakdown of the tendons, right? So yes, we talked about how you're getting the hydration component of it, which is so important, but you're not breaking down the tissue, which is actually what is the remodeling and the, the, the building components of it.
And so it is like, it's been such a powerful, I mean, I loved adding that in my athletes work because one, he had a ton of inhibition from. Getting hurt from the amount of injuries that he'd had on the, on that, on that knee and in his body in general, and the fact that he, you know, was trying to do two sports, one of one, which is tall and stiff, and the other, which is.
of absorbing forces and cutting and so this is like the more time we could work on the inhibition piece plus we were trying to push forward through an Accelerated accelerated accelerated rehab. So it was like those became such wonderful tools for us to overcome a lot of the Pain inhibition he was having and and also the pain and and his his his muscles were like always sort of stuck in that protective mode because we were pushing the envelope so much the Yielding exercises allowed for that blood flow and for things to like it was like his favorite thing to do on a warm up, right?
because He he always said it was very similar feeling to doing like wall sits for a warm up
Matt McInnes Watson: Exactly, and I think I think we we don't pay enough attention and we don't give enough credit to The neuromuscular depletion of being in like a contracted protective way as well Yes, and that therefore it gives us that like gives us that like Relaxing kind of energy to us So again, I go back to that like phrase of it being like therapeutic in a way and that you can come away It feels this you have that relaxed state Where you're not like it feels like you're just constantly holding a little bit of your breath Yeah I can't quite relax and let that go.
So you get into dynamic movement and you're like, you just don't have that ability to give yourself that bandwidth of, of space to work within. It's just shortened and everything is like high breathing. And like, I can't quite get into that. So,
yeah, I
think that's,
Anna Hartman: it's funny too. Cause again, like going back to the crossover with the nervous system, it's like, You know when a baby's upset and like tense like what do you do you bounce it to feel better right like this Oscillating thing is like literally built into our nervous system to relax to calm down
Matt McInnes Watson: Constantly being like why are you bouncing like why it was the same when I had So our daughter's now two and a half, so we don't have to, like, bounce her or relax her like that.
But if I pick up someone else's baby, the first thing I start to do is bounce them. And my wife's like, what are you bouncing them for? And I'm like, it's just, it's just this rhythm.
Anna Hartman: Ingrained, yeah, just ingrained. And I, I think it's so interesting. One of my favorite tricks I tell people when they have, you know, cause especially like, non athlete physical therapy clinic, or, you know, people come in and the, the, the patient's like, Oh my God, I just had the most stressful experience getting here.
Right? Like either work was crazy or traffic was crazy. And then they get in the door for PT and you've got an hour with them. And they're like talking a million miles a minute. Cause they're fucking amped up. And so I used to get, um, I used to grab a physio, two physio balls and I would I was like, Oh, here, come, let's sit and talk.
And I'd have them tell their story. And I, I wouldn't even tell them to bounce. I would just start bouncing and then we mirror each other. Right. So you start bouncing and then pretty soon they're telling a story and they just get quieter and quieter, quieter, quieter. And then I'm like, okay, now let's start our treatment.
And it was just like such a powerful way to like shift their nervous system really quick into more of safety and. The therapeutic ness. And so it was just like, again, like, I think that is like us, obviously I like working with you and learning, I've learned a lot. And part of the learning a lot is like organizing thoughts that were already in my head, but I didn't know how to assimilate it into a plyometric movement world, but then also like, yeah, just explaining things in a way that I'm like, Oh, fundamentally, this like makes so much sense.
Matt McInnes Watson: That's awesome. That's what that we, I mean, like, I was just watching my daughter and she does not stop bouncing. She's just like, I was just having a conversation with her. She's like this and I'm like, goodness, what's happening?
Anna Hartman: Some of my friends with older kids, uh, they had a trampoline in their backyard.
And I was like, you know what? When your kids get. in a dysregulated state Where they're clearly like mouthing off to you or just like spiraling, you know Sometimes they would come home from school with like homework and just so much stress from school and emotions of being like a teenager I'm like, you know what instead of fighting with them when they walk in the door Send them outside and tell them that they have to jump on the trampoline for two minutes I was like There's I dare you there is no way that you can go jump on a trampoline for two minutes and not be in a good mood when you're done It totally shifts your stage.
And so i'm like again, it goes back to that like fundamental bouncing Um and anything rhythmical right because like dancing's like that too It's like if we had music constantly played in our head when we're rocking on the street There would not be that many angry people in the world
It's
hard to be mad when you're in this rhythmical like bouncing state.
Matt McInnes Watson: Yeah Yeah
Anna Hartman: Yeah, and our kids, our kids are our best teachers, right? Like, yeah, that's what you're seeing.
Matt McInnes Watson: There's so much, there's so much to that. And it, it almost want to, you almost want to find out like what the reason is, but I think it is just that holistic view of it. Like how the neuromuscular system talks to the rest of the body and how it operates is just massive.
I just think it's just so valuable. And. Our muscles like to move like that. We like to have that contract relax mechanism to it Um, and obviously the the harder tissues like that as well They like to be stimulated like that and then we've got our organs that like to move it You know, I think that they they like to move in a certain way and i'm still It's a really random thought to come out with but like i'm still I always wonder if there's something to do with Um, even like cte with with how the brain is With how the brain is.
Anna Hartman: Yeah, pumps the fluids and gets rid of the, mm hmm.
Matt McInnes Watson: And it has that ability to contract and relax around, like, encapsulating the brain in the skull. I'm sure plyometrics, I would love to see the recollection of just people that had had CTE, and who had done a lot of plyometric training, and who hadn't. I'd be fascinated.
Anna Hartman: And like how good, like, I mean, and this goes back to sort of like, this is where my brain goes to in terms of when I think about this stuff, I'm like, yeah, going back to that fundamental thing we, we talked about is like, the body is like, the reason for inhibition is to like protect the organs. Like the, like the reason, like this is how our body is like designed and this, the, the studies of the CTE to are coming out that even people who didn't sustain a head injury concussion, um, are having CTE and, or having.
post concussion like syndrome without ever having a concussion. And when you think about how the body works, when it comes to like, um, well, like physics and the body works, right? Like our head is at the end of a big on long, flexible thing, like a whip. And so every motion, every time, like, and we've all felt this, you've seen Yeah.
So you stepped off a curb, not realizing the curb was there and you landed and you felt this whole energy go through your body. Right? And the last thing to whip is your head and your brain. And so what I see with the athletes, especially when, you know, when I think about adding in this visceral manipulation work is not only do I see a lot of like Container stiffness in their brain or not their brain, their cranium, which when the container is stiff, then it limits the blood flow.
And so your real spinal fluid and vascular fluid from recycling the, the damaged goods, right. That, and that's like a huge indicator and CTE and like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's and all the, all the neurodegenerative diseases, but I see their ligaments around their heart. Being super stiff. And part of that, I think, you know, is that they're running at such high speeds and then they're either stopping on their own, right.
They're either cutting and changing direction, but their organs are still accelerating in the way they were. Right. And the ligaments have to check it. And so the ligament gets different, stiffer. And when the ligaments that like that hold our heart in space gets stiff, it makes our heart have to work harder and the muscle have to work harder to pump Pump the blood because it doesn't have the fascial elastic recoil of the pericardial sac, you know And the movement of our breath and so I think and I think I've said this on a podcast before If, but I talk about it in my courses a lot is like, one of the things with NFL athletes is the incidence of heart attack after they retire.
And it used to be thought it was just because like they gained weight because they're not working out. They eat poorly or they ate poorly during their, when they were an athlete and got away with it. And now they don't, can't get away with it. Cause they're not working out. But what we've seen over the years is a healthier type of athlete go through the league.
And then when they retire, they're still pretty healthy. And so, but they're still having heart attacks at a really young age. And I think this is part of it. And so then when I, when I think about all the athletes and how they're not very good at yielding and like controlling the forces when they are, they're getting really good at producing high forces of movement and high velocities of movement, but they're not very good at.
controlling it. And so I'm like, yeah, where does that go? Energy is not created or destroyed. It has to go somewhere. So it gets stored in all of those tissues that are holding the organs in because the organs don't have a benefit of muscles around it to protect it. Right. They just have the connective tissue.
It's so interesting that that's where your brain is going to.
Matt McInnes Watson: I found it fascinating when, so we were doing a mass, I was doing my masters and we had someone come in, this is a while ago. We're talking 20. 15 16 and we had a guy come in and talk about cte because I think it was getting pretty popular around that Understand like
Anna Hartman: the movie concussion I think came around around that time
Matt McInnes Watson: it was in and around there and this guy had Had been doing studies on woodpeckers and why a woodpecker doesn't get cte and concussion And one of the fundamental parts of it was that They saw that the woodpecker, when they came into contact with the word, they would stick their tongue at the end of their beak.
And so it was like, it was like pointing their tongue out. Yeah. And they thought that there were, it was based on them being able to relax their neck muscles in a certain way, but also be able to, my anatomy in and around here is not great, but it was able to Hand over woodpeckers?
Anna Hartman: How dare you not know woodpecker anatomy?
Matt McInnes Watson: It was, it was doing something where Something in the neck was pulling down and allowing more of like a solidified position of the brain in the skull so it wasn't rattling around as much but also that there was rhythm to how they did it and There was a relax and contract way of doing it rather than coming in completely tense
Anna Hartman: Right, they're not just like banging their head against the wall.
That's what it looks like, but it's actually a very like
Matt McInnes Watson: If you slow it down, it's like a really smooth action. But
Anna Hartman: yeah,
Matt McInnes Watson: it was, that was fascinating. I don't know what had come from that and whether there was anything that was learned from that, but yeah. Super interesting.
Anna Hartman: Yeah. So interesting. I just, I think.
Yeah, I mean, problems like that, you know, the CTE and the heart attacks and the, and the, um, ACL epidemic, not to put ACLs in the same category as CTE or heart attacks, but also it's like an epidemic. I think there is just like so much to learn about, like, it's, you know, that opens up a whole nother can of worms, but it's just like, how we're training landing mechanics and how we're training, like, cutting.
I think we're fundamentally getting it wrong. And, and if we could like, look at it from this perspective, like you do, you know, with the, the nervous system safety and the, um, the just, yeah, feeling safe in ranges of motion, being able to like absorb and yield to the forces. Like, I think that athletes would be more protected from
ACL tears, as well as
Matt McInnes Watson: Yeah, I mean, it's the same.
Yeah, I mean, the Achilles epidemic is also right. Yeah,
Anna Hartman: Achilles. I mean, it's, it's, and it's all like the same mechanism. Right? Like, I just had the, this talk with the athlete that we worked with together. I was like, you know, because one of the Things that sort of lingering for him as some like soleus, like the, you know, like that protective mechanism of the soleus.
Exactly. And I'm like, listen, like we can't ignore the fact that, you know, seven months before you tore your ACL, you strained your soleus and then the team rushed you back faster than you should have been from that.
Matt McInnes Watson: Soleus is your biggest stability muscle in your lower leg. It is the, it is the stabilizer of stabilizers.
It's like, it takes. The biggest load out of any muscle in the body per square inch of how big it is, right?
Anna Hartman: Right. And then it's like, what does, what, what motion does it also check? Tibial anterior translation, which is how do you do your ACL? Tibial anterior translation. So it's like, I mean, yeah, it can't like, I'm like fundamentally.
Fundamentally, like we're still looking at the same, like the thing that drove the ACL problem is like, probably like still the thing that's limiting him from. Yeah. Like fully getting past this like inhibition and like getting back to what he wants to do. And so it's like, I was like, you can't, I said, I know there's a lot to like work on right now in training and like in your body.
I was like, but like, you keep skipping this like fundamental piece. You're avoiding letting your knee come forward with things and like using your soleus in a way that it gets to express all of its ranges of motion, right? Like it's full like eccentric, like let it absorb some, like let it yield. I'm like, yeah.
Matt McInnes Watson: Well, and, and if it doesn't fully do its job, then it's. It's job of pulling on the Achilles also starts to lack and It overloads the Achilles and potentially then crops up Achilles issues and then it yeah It becomes
Anna Hartman: because it's like when when they're in that protective mode, they can't do anything but be in that protective mode There's no more you can't go into eccentric contraction and you can't do a concentric contraction because you're already there So you can't concentrically contract anymore.
Matt McInnes Watson: Yeah,
Anna Hartman: it's um so so Interesting to me.
Matt McInnes Watson: Yep.
Anna Hartman: It's so like, and, and it's like one of those things that is like, well, it seems so simple, you're, you're doing all these like things that theoretically should be doing it, but I'm like, Also, he's a really good athlete that can get away with, you know, Doing things wrong.
Matt McInnes Watson: Yeah. So much to learn,
Anna Hartman: right? So much to learn. Well, um, I know that, I know we talked about doing this for an hour, so we're, we're, we're pretty much there and, um, I thank you, obviously we could talk, we know we could talk about this like for hours at a time. Um, I appreciate you so much being a guest on the podcast.
I appreciate your help with my athlete and just. Being said, but I can throw ideas like this around with like, it's so great. How can everyone like, where, where do we find you? And what do you got for my people? Cause I know you've got a lot.
Matt McInnes Watson: for having me on, number one. And thank you for, you know, giving me the opportunity to speak to the community and, and, and to work with that athlete as well.
It's, uh, just having that. You know, problem solving between the two of us as well. And being able to communicate like that is, I think it's special and it doesn't happen a lot.
Anna Hartman: Yeah, I agree.
Matt McInnes Watson: So it, yeah, it means a lot. They can reach out to me at McInnes Watson on Instagram, M C I N N E S W A T S O N. Or they can just go to Plus Plyos, plusplyos.. com. I've got a course, an introduction to plyometrics course, which feel free to take. It is, we've had almost a thousand people take it now. Um, so, so. It's been yeah, it's been really really great in just being able to distill some of the points that we've spoken about a lot with like systematically what it looks like to have fast and and More yielding based movements how that's programmed and so on.
Um, yeah, we've we've got a program as well so like we've gone through like how How we think things should be done, but do it Just do some of it and understand what this stuff feels like before you Throw it to your athletes. Yeah. Um, so I think that's really, really important. So yeah, you can get like our, our subscription is like a wide open thing.
You can just like Netflix, you can grab, we've got like 30 different programs. We have a yielding program on there as well, which people absolutely love. So yeah.
So that's, that's mainly what we do. We run seminars as well. Um,
Anna Hartman: he's got one coming up in. Austin? No.
Matt McInnes Watson: No, it's a new one in Tennessee. Um, I'm trying to arrange one potentially in California, but we'll see.
Um, over the next couple of months or so.
Anna Hartman: Yeah. Alright, well, I'll make sure that we link all of that in the show notes for everybody.
Matt McInnes Watson: Thank you. Appreciate your time and yeah, it's been good.
Anna Hartman: You too, thank you so much.
Matt McInnes Watson: Alright.