46. Joe Kenn - NFL Strength & Conditioning Coach of the Year, Founder Big House Power

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Innovate and keep an open mind. Coach Joe Kenn is one of the preeminent strength and conditioning coaches in all of sport and is widely known for being the creator of The Tier System. The founder of Big House Power, Joe has been the recipient of the NFL Strength and Conditioning Coach of the Year, NSCA Collegiate Strength & Conditioning Coach of the Year and numerous other awards and titles earned along the way that would take up the entire show notes if I let them. Coach Kenn was most recently the strength and conditioning coach for the Carolina Panthers and today is VP of Performance Education at Dynamic Fitness Strength

In today’s show Coach Kenn sits down for a fun wide ranging conversation. He shares the untold story about the writing of his first book and why the initial pushback on his innovative approach to sport specific training almost stopped “The Coach’s Strength Training Playbook” from happening. Recounts how growing up in a diverse part of Long Island may have contributed to one of his greatest gifts as a coach. Reflects on the important relationships and coaching experiences that shaped his approach to coaching. 

In the latter half of the episode Coach Kenn provides an explanation of The Tier System and why he believes 30 years later it has stood the test of time. We talk through how other possible programs and methodologies can be applied within the Tier System. His philosophy on Split vs. Total Body Training for sport. Coach Kenn discusses the criteria he uses when discerning the the best exercises for individual athletes. He offers his perspective on the power of a mantra and while above all else it’s important to focus on being effective and efficient. 

Mentioned In the Show:

Books: 

Patrick Lencioni: The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable, The Motive, The Three Signs of a Miserable Job, Death by Meeting

John C. Maxwell: Leadership Books

Jack Zufelt: The DNA of Success

George Mumford: The Mindful Athlete: Secrets to pure performance

National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA): https://www.nsca.com/?gclid=CjwKCAiAi_D_BRApEiwASslbJ2YhYDlbfMOVacvUiwGGVfAnW5IB-W2K9JUN3M25rKuHiU1991eBohoCBgkQAvD_BwE

Follow Joe: 

Instagram: @bighousepower

Big House Power website: https://bighousepower.com/

Inside The House with Joe “Big House” Kenn (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkApi3C_aMELrcud5KlNRfw/featured

Follow The Professional Athlete Podcast with Ken Gunter: 

Instagram: @the_professionalathlete

Website: https://www.kengunter.com/

YouTube: Ken Gunter https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRhgjkoSiJXAbS_MIasvvzQ/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kengunterpodcast

Produced By: Justin Gunter, Ken Gunter

Music By: Justin Gunter, Ken Gunter

Joe Kenn Episode Transcription:

Joe Kenn  00:00

I've signed over my rights. Right.

Ken Gunter  00:01

All right, man. Exactly. On the dotted line. Well, cool. I'll get it going here. And if for any reason you need to stop halfway through or whatever, let me know we can we can always edit it up.

Joe Kenn  00:11

Gotcha. Cool. All right.

Ken Gunter  00:14

Joe, welcome to the show. We're excited to have you.

Joe Kenn  00:17

I appreciate it. Man, I thank you for thinking of me for sure.

Ken Gunter  00:21

Absolutely, absolutely. Well, it's it's funny. You know, a lot of people say like, Oh, this person wrote the book on this, you you quite literally wrote the book on a lot of strength and conditioning principles that are still being used today. So it's an honor to have you on the show.

Joe Kenn  00:38

Yeah, thanks. It's It's funny how that project came to fruition. But you, you think of it as just a way to make a positive impact on the athletes you coach. And it turns out, it turns into a different voice of its own, so to speak, were the people that you get involved with and people that become close to you as colleagues and some even become almost like, on blood related family, that they push you in a direction to spread the the thought process of what you did, I mean, what what we created in 1992 was very innovative. It was not thought out the way we talked about structuring exercises and but it was built specifically and it was created specifically because the women's basketball coach at the time at Boise State and that was one of my top sports when I first got into it. June Doherty, she didn't challenge she didn't challenge us, or didn't challenge me specifically. But she was a women's basketball coach in the early 90s. If you know anything about the history of collegiate strength and conditioning, most of the programs that the other sports wants to once the other sports realized, hey, what these football guys are doing. There may be some merit for us to do some strength training. And then the and then the the evolution of a strength coach, that became strength and conditioning coach, and now there's numerous names for it. Yeah, you generally got a old football program for that sport. Okay, I mean, that's kind of how generally went down, right. And she, she played competitive basketball at Ohio State. She worked for Tara vanderveer, at Stanford, in the 90s. So she knew what was she knew what, she had higher expectations than that. And when she first met me, you know, I walk in. And at that point in time, you know, I'm saying, you know, I'm a 6263 guy, but I'm 320 pounds. I'm three years out of playing competitive, collegiate football. And I'm powerlifting. And she sees me walk in and what does she think? Here's another football guy, right? Who's gonna do football things? But like,

Ken Gunter  02:57

my point guards like linebackers. Yeah.

Joe Kenn  02:59

And, and, and look, again, when you really look at it training athletes is very similar anyway. But her point was, I'm tired of getting the old football programs to train my basketball team, can I and I took that too. I took that to heart. Because this was my team, like, Coach Thompson, who was my boss at the time, had told me These are my teams, I had, I don't want to say I had creative freedom, but I had, he had given me creative freedom to create these training plans. And I like I said, I had a lot of a lot of background at that point, time of self study of reading a lot of different programming. And I was trained in college with a combination of the, the original high intensity training principles of one set to failure, with some Olympic lifts and, you know, power, let's bold it in. But my, my college strength coach was 100%, high intensity based, he was mixing in the other stuff, because the football coach is Warren. So that's why that's why I first learned how to play the game and how you have to figure out how to justify stuff. But long story short, I developed this plan on my own. I mean, I'm not. And then as I got more people, that that started to work under me. They got to understand it. And then I've gotten a lot of feedback from assistance over time, the integrity always stayed the same. That's a big thing about programming. That's a big thing about life. You're going to manipulate a lot of things but your your core, right break your core, like who you are, and what you stand for. You can manipulate a lot of other things, but that that stuff, you start messing with that and then you know things start becoming fraudulent.

Ken Gunter  04:52

Right. So

Joe Kenn  04:53

yeah, so the the evolution came to a point where we were rolling, we were doing In a lot of good things, we have a very good success in our strength conditioning program with all the sports. At that time, at this time, I became the head strength coach and my assistant at the time. Rich gray, who was like I said, He's, he's, he's my brother. So he's like, you gotta write an article for the nsca journal. Everybody wants to hear this, you know, this. This doesn't This is nothing like they do believe in right.

Ken Gunter  05:25

Okay, so maybe it was it was too big of a departure that you're like, this is gonna be close.

Joe Kenn  05:30

I know what I you know, I studied that stuff. I know what they expect. They expect certain protocols of how to write a program. When you're a huge conglomerate like that. It's hard for them to justify anything different, let alone some up and coming strength coach from Boise State, Boise, Idaho. Yeah. And because I push some boundaries that we're not legitimate protocols to powerlifting Olympic lifting, weightlifting, whatever you want to call it. Yeah, I was building something that was purely based off of training sport, what I call sporting athletes. Now, not athletes who compete in the strength disciplines of bodybuilding, powerlifting, and Olympic lifting at that time, now you have strong man, professional CrossFit athletes, there's a couple of other professional strength related disciplines out there now. Right. 100% committed to that. And so I broke some of the norms that most people

06:31

were

Joe Kenn  06:32

were utilizing at that time that were kind of like, No, no, you can't do this. Well, the one thing you'll learn about training an athlete, you can pretty much do whatever you want. I mean, that's the truth. Because there's, so many of the modalities of physical fitness, and strength development have to be intertwined. When you're dealing with yourself, like, you know, you play football, you understand what I'm saying, you got to be strong, you got to be fast, you got to be pliable, you got to be conditioned, you got if you play football, you got to be able to play, you know, between one in 15 plays in a series with only 30 seconds rest, right? There's ways you got to prepare for that. Yeah, not that's, that's way different than one of those specific components of the three major disciplines of strength that we all got attracted to. So when I submit the article to the nsca journal, obviously, I get peer reviewed, which, to me, I still say, I know who is allegedly on their peer review board and none of them were coaching at that time. Okay, you weren't you weren't peer reviewed, you were being reviewed by their editorial board. Right. And at the time, Harvey Newton, who's a very highly ranked weightlifting coach in our in the United States, and is well renowned as a weightlifting aficionado, was the was the executive director of the nsca. And long story short on that, because I don't want to get too carried away with my smell is

Ken Gunter  08:04

actually fantastic. I'm loving hearing about this. Yeah. Don't stop on my attack. So

Joe Kenn  08:08

we, so I get the article back. And obviously, they're just ripping me you can't do Olympic lifts. After benching and squatting and you can't do it here. You can't do this, you can't do that. And I told rich, I said, I said, I told you these people don't want to listen, they don't want to see there's other ways to to do this. I'm not going to answer these people question. They don't live in our world. And I will say that, as much as I believe in science, as much as I believe there has to be a connection. For you to be that closed minded, tells me that's not the science people I want to deal with. Yeah. Well, and

Ken Gunter  08:44

what were you seeing on your end? I mean, were the results like were you seeing the sort of improvement that was like giving you the feedback that hey, like this, this is innovative? Yes.

Joe Kenn  08:54

I don't want to get you know, what we do is general what practices is specific, you're trying to mold. My my overall generalization of my philosophy is if I can develop a highly robust and resilient athlete, when that coach teaches them the very specifics, they should be able to improve like I can I can improve your vertical jump if you're a basketball player. I know I can't. But is that necessarily going to improve your rebounding if your coach doesn't properly teach you how to blocks out? And then more importantly, what we learned from someone like Dennis Rodman? Are you studying angles? Are you watching? The ball bounces off the rim? Yeah, what was he a great rebounder because of his fanatical effort? Yes, but when you listen to the guy, it's kind of like listening to Mike Tyson talk about boxing. Those guys studied the art of what they did in Rodman's case, he studied the art of rebounding. So I was studying the art of developing a a program for a For, for a sporting athlete, to develop some type of plan that would build up their strength component, their speed component, their power component, their endurance component, continue to do things that would make them mobile and robust. As we got older, we really understood more about what people called prehab, or what I call now is, you know, readiness programs and, and protection work.

Ken Gunter  10:26

And I want to if we have time, definitely want to want to talk to you a little bit about that as well.

Joe Kenn  10:30

And and so there was a lot of things going on. So we saw, you know, at that point in time, we call them our testing protocols. Right now, everybody calls him KPIs or key performance indicators that value and athleticism we saw that we saw overall, again, I don't, I will never tell you that my, my programs will reduce or prevent injury because that's, that doesn't happen in sports. We've seen time and time again. And I learned that over time, how do we evolve my verbiage, when I talk about what we're trying to do from an injury standpoint, and in the end, that's where I use the word protection. My ultimate goal is to try to build a body armor that builds the confidence that the athlete believe that we have put them in a in a sense and a development standpoint, that they can protect themselves at all costs. And that if injury occurs, because the way they've been trained, hopefully, we can expediate the recovery process, if that makes sense.

Ken Gunter  11:34

I think so. Yeah.

Joe Kenn  11:36

And because here's what happens when when Yeah, this is some hypocrite. And again, we're jumping around, sorry, but no, I love it. Here's the hypocritical stuff of the hypocrisy of strength coaching, back in the early 80s and 90s. When it comes to, and probably, you know, you hear it a lot to what's the number one goal is strength program, reduce injury, right. But back when I back when I came up, that's what everybody was talking. But then the first thing we did with a new athlete, and we didn't even know their name, you know, that's like a left humor. Oh, yeah. No, we got we got to test you and see what see what you squat.

Ken Gunter  12:10

Max. Max,

Joe Kenn  12:11

I don't even know how you squat or let alone clean, right? Max clean? Well, I've never cleaned before. All right, don't worry about what just see what the look like. So we can get a number. So Exactly. Tell me we're gonna look to reduce injury, when we're gonna try to get one the first day we meet a guy right or so. And like I said, we saw the general stuff that we were hoping to do with a needs analysis we removed. I don't believe there's one bad exercise. I don't believe any exercise. It's the applicable, it's the applicability of that exercise that you have to look at. Just because you can doesn't mean you should, right, you know what I'm saying? Just because, yeah, so and so's programs, doing these movements? doesn't necessarily mean everybody has to do these movements. You have to, you have to look at where's the best bang for your buck? Because remember, most of the movements we we pick are from, again, athletes that are professionals in that.

Ken Gunter  13:09

Yeah.

Joe Kenn  13:09

So when when I go into the weight room as a power lifter, that's my practice field. Right? Not your practice field, right? Most of the time, especially during the season, a lot of guys lift after practice, do you really think they want to come in after practice? You know, there's a story that I was told, and it is hot to high level power lifters are training, right? Okay. And they go through this monster program. And one guy always wondered why athletes can't get stronger, or athletes will write. And after this big session to one powerlifter goes to the one guy goes, Hey, let's go out and shoot baskets. And he goes, why would I want to do that? He goes, that's the same thing. The basketball player says after practice when the coach says go lift weights,

Ken Gunter  13:53

right? Exactly, you

Joe Kenn  13:55

know, yeah, you got to know your clientele. So you got to build these programmings. That makes sense. I don't expect the athlete to love the weight room like I did. They're great. But we didn't, we didn't sign them for that. We're not paying them money for that. We didn't give him a scholarship for that. But if we can build a program where they understand what the goal is, and the intent of it helped them improve themselves. Yeah, and the things that come at it mentally, as well as physically and as well as things that you can, like you said, you can bring into everyday life showing up on time, right? being committed, under understanding routine, understanding what work actually means, right, understanding how relying on teammates is important and then then relying on you figuring out who has the capabilities to lead, figuring out who has the capability to follow, figuring out who are the capability that doesn't have either and they wind up disappearing. That's That's it. That's it any business? Well, and

Ken Gunter  14:58

yes, I have so many questions for you, but but also That kind of thought, you know, I have to imagine whether you're at college, you're in the professional ranks, like there must be so many different types of personalities that come through your door. And let alone you already references like having to manage kind of that relationship with the coach who ultimately is probably having a lot of input as well. You know, how do you go about trying to like maximize, I guess what each athlete is getting out of the weight room, to your point, like when they're bringing, I mean, just within a football team, you have, you know, the 185 pound wide receiver who can run a four, three, and then you've got the D lineman who might be like, you know, 315, like, how do you go about managing all those personalities and different, like athletic needs under under one roof? Well,

Joe Kenn  15:44

that's an evolution because, you know, 2030 years ago, it didn't matter. Everybody did the same workout. You know, back then now, you know, your evolution that came. And again, whether that was right or wrong, it didn't matter structure is better than no structure. Then the staff was small, like, for example, we had, I don't want to I can't remember, let's just say we had 17 Sports at Boise State. Yeah, it was the head strength coach, and me and I was a GA, that was it.

Ken Gunter  16:14

On varsity sports,

Joe Kenn  16:15

you know, now, and that was small, like, but there was schools that had 20 plus varsity sports with only two people. Right? There was very few. In the early 90s, there was very few full time assistant strength and conditioning coach and jobs. It was usually a head guy, and a bunch of GPAs. And now it's almost totally flipped, where everybody's full time and there are no graduate assistant positions. And that's and that's made it tougher for younger strength coaches to get masters because when I came up, there was automatic, you go get your masters paid for by being a GA, well, now it's, you go right into a full time, lower paid position and climb the ladder, but they still expect you to have a Master's. Right. So it's gonna pay for it. Yeah, again. Yeah. But to mix to talk about the one. You You always you always be grateful where I call you have your what's the easiest way? Not? There's certain things like I don't I can't help the fact that I was born and raised in New York, right? in Long Island. Right? Well, I was exposed to a lot of ethnicity. Yeah, I was exposed to a lot, a lot of you know, color. Right? Right. So for me, that I feel like that's always been a, you know, that's just an unwritten gift. Like, I was fortunate to be raised in a environment where whether it was you know, conducive to anything else, I just saw a lot.

Ken Gunter  17:48

Yeah, you were like, among diversity, like you didn't know.

Joe Kenn  17:50

So for me, it was always and coming from lower middle middle class, you see things that you see things in a different perspective. Yeah, for sure. I I personally think those those people and athletes who come from let's just say from the bottom to the top, yeah, really succeed better from those who started at the top, because they don't understand the come up. Yeah, you know, they, they, they, you know, like, you know, and again, everybody's got their trip right everybody's got their journey I'm not putting out hell there's I wish you know, sometimes a man Imagine if I would have if my dad didn't pick up trash for 20 years and and he was a whatever college professor or lawyer How would I have been raised right? But my dad grew up my dad right sanitation in a time where you didn't you didn't go with the clamps, you walk from house to house, dumping garbage and throwing it on your shoulder 20 miles a day. So I that's what I knew. Right? Yeah. So that's when we were talking sports and how to be a tough sob at my dinner table. We're not talking you know what happened in that on TV or? And and, and stuff like that. So yeah, not everybody likes it. Everybody's different. It's how you take what you are and figure out how to learn what the other what you don't know is about it. It's easier to I and again, this is my opinion, I always reserve the right to be wrong. It's one person's life journey that tells him that I'd rather be on the come up and understand the process and and understand that that journey means something then be up on top and not understand what happened when you crash and burn.

Ken Gunter  19:43

You know what and this is gonna be a total I mean, I have a whole list of things here. I want to ask you but this this is something I think about a lot. So you know, I grew up in a blue collar family. Dad is pretty Dad, dad worked hard, but there's you know a number of things that were tough growing up. In some circumstances, but generally pretty well, but I would say like the chips that I have on my shoulder are like the things that drove me to get to the point that I am today. And I almost like treasure them in a way, you know what I mean? In a way and I'm getting over it as I get older, but like the people that everything handed to them. I don't know if resentment was the right word or have

Joe Kenn  20:21

resentment, like, their own thing. Like I, I know that, in my situation, the town I lived in, made me who I am, who he is, but in the end, I didn't want to stay there like they did. Right. You know, like, I have bigger fish to fry, so to speak. So I knew like my drive was, do I think my mom and dad could have figured out a way to pay me pay for me to go to college? Yeah, because that's who they are. But I wasn't going out like that. I told if I wasn't getting a scholarship, then I was going to work with my dad at sanitation. Right. So my dad saw the drive that I like, I had odds and end jobs growing up. But my dad said Your job is to get out of here. So he was willing to like where other kids were working. I was in the labor. Yeah. Working. I was running the streets of Inwood. Because in the end, that I wasn't talented enough not to do that. Hmm. In high school, I had to I had to, to work to be good at what I was. My high school was one of the best high schools on Long Island to play football. By college, my high school coach played with my dad at that high school. They were very good friends. My my uncle played at that high school was an assistant coach, the line coach who I give a lot of credit for giving me the skills to get a scholarship played at that high school and was from that area. So it's one of those types of it's like a, I call it a small country town in Long Island. Yeah, how we bred and born and bred in that in that deal. And the five towns area as a whole. So I just knew that that was my way out. And there was nothing I had. And again, I just want it out. No, I have no qualms of saying it. There's nothing bad about where I was from there was nothing bad. I want to say about my childhood. I don't there's nothing bad I want to say about my high school experience. I just wanted to out I wanted I wasn't into the hit the city and the nightlife stuff too crazy. I just was like, Hey, man, I gotta get out. And and I told my mom, I said, when I leave, I'm not. I'm not coming back unless it's a few vacations. And she said it till the day she passed. Because you always said you weren't coming back and you never did. And, and and I and again, I could have went to Sierra. My final two choices are college after I had. I was very fortunate. I got the show. I chose where I wanted to go. I wasn't told where I wanted to go.

Ken Gunter  23:02

Yeah, that makes sense. That is a good problem to have.

Joe Kenn  23:05

So my final two choices was Syracuse, who recruited me hard for two and a half years and back then no one offered you as a sophomore or junior, you very you very rarely got that you had to you had to play it out and see where the chips fell. Right and Wake Forest. And, and my and then my other my other five were my top five were Rutgers temple, and South Carolina was my final five. Yeah, I chose Wake Forest. One because I just felt even though Syracuse was five hours away, it was still in New York. So I was like, yeah, I'm just out. And and Wake Forest gave me an opportunity where I thought athletically I could be a big fish in a little pond for them. If that makes.

Ken Gunter  23:55

It does.

Joe Kenn  23:55

Yeah. And I was looking at it from playing time. You know, you're at your play division one. If you're good enough, you go to the NFL, right? academically extremely challenging. I know. Everybody goes, man. Did you go there for the academics? I said absolutely not. Fortunately for me, my dad was a very stickler for me when it came to grades because his grades were were utterly poor so and like I said, he went to my high school. So he had my grade before I had him. And he drove the app. So my dad picked up trash in the morning, he drove the afternoon school bus for the junior high in high school in the afternoon. And then he'd watch practice and then go bounce because he's one of the top bouncers on Long Island and in Queens, and that sounds like a legend. And my dad did OC like he was my hero. Yeah, he's gone now but I'm sorry. My son, my oldest son's a lot like him. I'm not so much those guys are. Those guys who beat up man to Thug Life was real. That's amazing.

25:01

So and

Joe Kenn  25:02

So again, getting back to what we're talking about. So you you understand people, right? Yeah. And that helps. And you and you understand, you know, it, but you're not 100% like you can never, you're not gonna hit with everybody. And I was fortunate that I, I hit with a way more like, I would say, and I hate my wife hates, like, when you throw out numbers like 95%, orange, you get 95%. But I would say, very, very confidently that I hit with nine out of 10 or better of every athlete I ever came in to contact with. Now that that 1% or that 10% or less, you better have people surrounding you that have personalities that can can work with those people. Right? You're not like again, a great example is I have the utmost respect for Cam Newton, the most, one of the hardest working athletes I've ever coached. High school college a pro. Yeah, unique in a lot of ways, but very hard on himself, had his way of doing it. But when it came to what we asked, hard worker button, I let my assistant Jason micucci train them one on one. Because their fit was better. Oh, I've got nothing. There's no i don't think i don't think you know, I think cam is cool with me. I'm cool with cam but in the end, for us to be successful. I thought Jason was the perfect fit for him. And for seven years. He trained cam. I call it one on one but cam would be in there with the groups that during group time unless Yeah, during the season a little different because those guys have different schedules during the season after practice with media and stuff. I mean, same thing with Christian McCaffrey, I trained Christian, one on one during the season. And a lot of times with media man or treatment and stuff like that. Sometimes they just, they're not going to be there with the whole group. Right? But cam, it just feels so you find those fits. That's why when you want to you, if you're an up and coming coach, you never want to hire yourself as an assistant, you already have that person. I would say the same thing in business. If you're running a team for a business, or you're the executor overseeing a team and you're putting a team together. You don't you already got you. Right. So you don't need you. But you need other people around you that. Yeah, so like I was saying, like, when you're building a team, you got to be aware of that you, you, you And plus, when you're building a team, and you're building a staff, and you have these unique individuals, you gotta, you know, you got to learn to be, what's the word not vulnerable. As much as you want to be arrogant and cocky, and be selfish. If you want to be successful, you have to show some vulnerability in yourself if that's anything that I've learned over time, starting off as a brash, arrogant type of leader. And as I grew with the help of several people at Arizona State in particular, that took me under my wing, Jean Smith, the Ohio State Athletic Director was at Arizona State at the time, a woman a woman that that he brought in, that was very, very important in my growth as a leader was a Christine Muldoon, she was one of those types of outside influences that you bring in to help build culture, you know, the, the famous, the famous cultural line. And those two people in particular Dirt, dirt cutter football coach that was at Boise State with me and Arizona state. And now as a NFL coach, he had a lot to do with that and believing in my leadership capabilities. But it's an evolution and you learn a lot, you learn different things as being a leader, you're the role I'm in now for dynamic. I have a cool title, but I understand that my role is more of a support to the other VPS and the own. So yeah, I have a leadership title. But I've understood from a vulnerability standpoint of where my role really is, is underneath these people. And I have to learn, that's something you learn right? Take direction from people. And at this point in time, that's good to know. Because if, if there is a time I can get back into coaching, I will have a better understanding of my staff. Because for the most part, my entire career I've been a leader, right when I played I lead when I played in the coaching staff realized by commitment to the weight room. I was in charge of getting guys in there it was on me. I would have been the one punished if they didn't come in and You know, when I when I started to get into coaching, my first coaching job, you know, all I taught all I all I believed from the time I was a sophomore in college was I want to be a coach, I want to be a strength coach. I want to work with these guys. And then I get my opportunity of great. One of our graduate assistants got a high school job. Like I sat down in Florida, and I go out there and I go out for the first practice and I'm like, man, dude, what happens if I can't coach like, what happens if I you know, I suck. Right? Now, what do I do? Like I put all my eggs in this basket, right? Yeah, health, health and Sport Science degree that ain't gonna help me in the business world. I mean, like, I'm all hidden, right? And luckily for me, my style, my persona, the things that you know, my passion, my enthusiasm for what I was trying to accomplish. I hit and yeah, you know, people ask me why do you think it is I said, sometimes you just you when someone says, or someone talks about you or says oh man, he's got a gift and then you say well explain what that means. A gift is on a split it's unexplainable to me you can't there's nothing to explain I can like I said, Why Why am I usually have a good rapport with a lot of the athletes Well, that's his gift. What does that mean? It means what I said maybe that was because where I grew up my exposure to a large abundance of different people from whether it's race creed color, ethnicity background I was afforded that Yeah, because I saw that like I said, in Inwood was this this level but in Lawrence was a little bit level higher North woodmere and woodmere was another higher tax let's just say tax bracket Yeah. And then they all had there was six public schools that all funneled into the junior high so now you're in your little isolation like PS number two all the Inwood kids right? And and then all of a sudden you get funneled into junior high and now you you meet kids from like number one school number five school and number six school really didn't even know those people existed. Yeah, they're like a two minute drive down the street.

Ken Gunter  32:09

Right and then I imagine like all different like economic

Joe Kenn  32:14

chain, but like if we went to the five towns you can see like, Inwood was literally the others town across the tracks. Okay, then you cross the tracks to Lawrence. Lawrence cedarhurst. Oh, so they were real close. But like Lawrence was like, always rated lower than cedars. And then woodmere was over there. And then North woodmere right. They just sound

Ken Gunter  32:34

like like they're, you know what I mean? Which one?

Joe Kenn  32:39

I give you even even a better one. So you watch Goodfellas? Yes, yes. So, good. Ray Liotta. You know, Henry Hill, his wife was from North woodmere. Okay, well, you can get an idea of the area I lived in, when you mix it all up. So and then, so you take that, and then when I got older, I was fortunate, like as I make my growth, and I make my journey. Well, now, I go to Utah. So now I'm exposed to two very interesting. And societal types of people. Yeah, guy.

Ken Gunter  33:18

Laws when you start talking about what's going on Utah.

Joe Kenn  33:23

Really introduced to the Mormon, the Mormon religion. Yeah. And the the structure and the rigidity of certain things that is, especially the whole mission process. Oh, yeah. So you now you have to understand that, right? Because, as a non Mormon, that's a brand new education process to me that you can see a guy as a freshman and he turns 19, he's going on his mission for two years,

Ken Gunter  33:47

three years, he comes back,

Joe Kenn  33:49

and he's 21 years old, and there's a good chance within that time, he'll get married and have a kid.

Ken Gunter  33:57

Yeah, I have my roommate in college on the football team was was Mormon and I think Hawaiian initially and I know there's a lot of

Joe Kenn  34:04

and then you get the Polynesian now, the total culture like I always said, Don't pick a fight with a Polynesian because unlike every other grouping that I've coached, they stick together debt. That's true family, like, if you if you had like a battle royale of just say, you know, Caucasians, African Americans. And you had to call your call your boys up, you know, somebody, you might like, Hey, man, we're having this like, you know, large of Flatbush Rumble, right, it's

Ken Gunter  34:39

going down.

Joe Kenn  34:41

You got other things to do. The Polynesians they'll all be there.

Ken Gunter  34:45

Yeah. My buddies are all watching the masks on

Joe Kenn  34:49

there. They're all they're very, very family oriented. They're very, very committed to each other. You learn that stuff. And again, we're we're kind of making jokes about it. But those are things that helped me Because now cuz now like to me, I said, I've got it all covered. I've coached all different demographics, I've coached. I mean, hate to say guys with gang affiliations in Angeles, to Polynesians, to grown men of the Mormon religion. That's a very interesting dynamic of everything else. So I have I've been exposed to a lot and I and I say to myself, you know, I spent two years in Utah. And I was supposed to spend two years in Utah because I got to learn about coaching Polynesians, and coaching knows that the Mormon faith and a lot of Polynesians are Mormon. So it's a combination of Right. Yeah. You know, and, and that's, and that's a good thing. Yeah, I use that to my advantage, because it's part of the growth process. And so every step of the journey, I've had a lot of positive things. I spent two years at Louisville. We weren't we were the staff was let go after two years. But my I don't again, I don't like talking politics. I don't like talking religion. But one of the one of the greatest things that ever happened to me at Louisville was my relationship with the FCA chaplain Chris Morgan. Hmm. Like, it's just a legitimate, deep hearted friendship like I've confided in him. And what I love about Chris is, and he's a very, you know, he's a Christian like he is, but like, he told me a few times he goes, just remember house. I wasn't always a Christian. So

Ken Gunter  36:37

don't step too far.

Joe Kenn  36:39

But, but he, but he understands. He allows me to be me. And I want to be respectful of who he is. Yeah, I wouldn't say guarded. But if I slip and drop an F bomb, I'm okay. I'm cool. Because Chris is cool. Cuz he knows it's me. Were on other people, I would be a little bit like, Damn, man, you can't be doing that. Right, Chris allows, and that's why Chris is Chris's base in his FCA growth. Louisville is one of the strongest I've ever seen ever, is because he allows you to behave like here's a guy who'll do Ramadan, if you're Muslim with the guys. Right? Cool. Here's a guy who understands Hanukkah and all I mean, he's about he's about being there for the player.

Ken Gunter  37:24

Yeah, he embraces them. They respect.

Joe Kenn  37:28

They're throwing it at you. Yeah, he will embrace you if you come to him with questions. But he's not out there peddling it. And I don't want to seem derogatory to No, I'm just saying that. And I think and I think that's what makes them so successful is, yeah, he is who he is. And oh, by the way, I just happened to be the FCA chaplain.

Ken Gunter  37:53

Right? Well, and to your point, like, it kind of gets me thinking, like, as long as you're authentic, you know, and if you're truly authentic to yourself, what you believe what you stand for, in most situations, people will be respectful and appreciate that, right? It does cross a line if like, you begin to start kind of trying to force whatever your perspective is your viewpoint. And that could even be like, if we're talking about training, that could be like your method of training. You know, that's when it becomes like a problem. And one of the things that I've really enjoyed, especially like I said, over the last week, I've been going through a lot of your old presentations and watching the the new stuff you're doing through your platform on YouTube. I would say you come across as 100% authentic, and one of the things

Joe Kenn  38:37

that Yeah, more important than, than a lot of things. And it's funny you say that because yeah, my one of our owners, Kirk Tambor, Nino, he'll he'll remind the people in the office is I don't want him to lose his authenticity.

Ken Gunter  38:53

You don't want to show up in a tie?

Joe Kenn  38:55

Yeah. Like, that's who he is. Let him be who he is. And

Ken Gunter  38:58

right. Absolutely, man. Oh, it's

Joe Kenn  39:00

cool. And again, I don't know, man. I know what I know who I am. Yeah. Like I always say, I know what I know. I know what I don't know. I know what I need to know. And I know what I don't care to know. Because I'm not that important. I'm at that point in my life. Like 20 years ago, there's probably a lot of things I needed to know that I and then even though I didn't care about it, I thought I thought I had to because that's like that growth mindset and all that stuff, right? Read a million bucks a year. And I comprehend any of them. Just say you read them, right? Yeah. And and so now I'm at that point in my belief that there's a lot of great things out there, whether it's training, whether it's conditioning, whether it's this, whether it's nutrition, recovery, sleep, how to run a business, but I'm so IP rooted in what I believe, if I don't think that particular measurement Or, you know, verse or something doesn't have any type of ability to be modified and applied to my belief system, then I'm okay with someone else knowing that I'm not. And I'm not. Because I have, you know, very limited time. You know, there's only so many seconds in a minute, there's only so many minutes in an hour, there's so many hours in a day, right? I'm going to make sure that I've done enough deep thought that if I bring if I'm going to go into this and dive into this from an investment, yeah, that I know something involved in that is going to be able to be applicable to what I'm looking for it to be. Like with training. There's a lot of great training stuff out there. There's certain things that are highly I highly respect the amount of time that individuals put into it. It just doesn't fit me, huh, I know, I know enough to know, like, if somebody asked me about it, like, Okay, can you use this with the tier system? Of course you can. Because this what you're talking about? Is this. The tier system is that so? Yes, it can be meshed? Oh, I didn't think about that. I just thought it was training programs. No, there's difference between programming and cyclical based, right, like cyclical is, is more the in depth sets and reps. And programming and structure is choice in order of exercise, risk analysis on those exercises, sets and reps can be done a lot of different ways, regardless of the exercise and vice versa. Right. There's certain things that mix and same thing with business. There's a lot of great things out there. I mean, I read this book, he read this book. I don't necessarily I like reading books that people don't read. Yeah, you know what I'm saying? Like, and again, there's people out there who know that I wouldn't be BS. And if I said that, but I I was one of the first persons that got exposed to Patrick lencioni. I don't know if you're familiar with our dysfunctions of a team. Oh, no. But he's got a bunch of books. I just read the motive. But he hid the Five Dysfunctions of a team is like a monster book in, in sports and leadership and, and a lot of coaches that read it, but I was one of the first ones that got exposed and brought that up on some, some old interviews. And, you know, like, Dave's got three signs of a miserable job was very good book, a book that has helped me twice. Hmm. One was when I knew my time was running out at Arizona State and helped me move on to Louisville.

Ken Gunter  42:40

Okay, like, Yeah, because of that book, you could see signs if this was to come to an end,

Joe Kenn  42:45

right? And then, you know, there's a, there's, I mean, I've got the whole outline up there. But it's like four, four objectives of an extrordinary. Executive.

Ken Gunter  42:54

Okay, let's check this out. Yeah. And

Joe Kenn  42:56

what the great thing about it is, is I love the writing style, and I have a hard time now retaining stuff, like remembering. So that's why I'm like big highlight duck Tat, dog tail and get back to them and do some review. But what what I love about the read is, he writes the first half in like a fable. Like, so he's talking to you about the three sides of a miserable job, but he's walking you through like a story. And then the second half is like the textbook. Right? That makes sense. So you know, it does make sense. Yeah, very, very valuable. big, huge fan. He doesn't know how much he's driven. A lot of the things that I've tried to do another great book, death by meeting everybody wants to meet to meet, I'm going to meet to compete. And that doesn't mean our long meetings 10 times a day, and getting nothing accomplished. You can get a lot accomplished in a five minute huddle, or a two minute, what we used to call like Two Minute Warnings, where we just meet every day as a group just quick to get everybody's goals and objectives of what's going on in their schedule in case there was some overlap that we had to do or maybe a problem that needed to be solved. Yeah. Again, great author, highly recommend, if you're not, if you're not exposed to them, I would highly recommend.

Ken Gunter  44:24

Yeah, I'll link to those in the show notes. For sure. Afterwards, too. So people listening want to check it out? Yeah, that'd be that'd be perfect. That's

Joe Kenn  44:30

been awesome. One book that I read a long time ago, that really made me think was called the DNA of success. And it talked about goal setting and versus a heartfelt, I think, was mindset versus heart set. I can't remember the terms. But a lot of times, you know, people talk about writing down your goals is a key point to achieving them.

Ken Gunter  44:52

Yeah,

Joe Kenn  44:53

but yet the truth is, you can write down all the goals you want. If it's not embedded in your heart, you're not going to choose them whether you write them down Not? Yeah, there's there's things you got to understand. Yeah. If you're gonna write them down, are they still embedded in your heart? Yeah. Because you're just gonna write, you're gonna look at that goal. And you're like, yeah, I wrote these goals down, but I don't give a crap.

Ken Gunter  45:16

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, there has to there has to be like, some meaning and intent behind it. I

Joe Kenn  45:20

mean, you gotta, you gotta you gotta put yourself in a sense of, are you willing to persevere you railing to fight and sacrifice for this goal? And that's something that resume, you know, again, say it's a 200 page book. That's the thing that sticks out to me. I read that book, you know, probably 1516 years ago. And that's something that's always a lot of great. What is it the, again, I had them all I've just been doing stuff. I can't remember I said the mindful athlete is another colleague. Forgot the author's awesome. I think it's called the mindful athlete. I'll check and send it over to you because I got all those books out. Yeah, it over there. That was on another another shelf, you know, and I've read some of john Maxwell stuff, but everybody reads john Maxwell. Right. Yeah, I'd rather try to build something that every I'm a big believer in being who you are. I'm not I'm not following the the trail because everybody says Maxwell's the guy so everybody's gonna read Maxwell. But then I know that everybody who reads Maxwell is gonna have the same same intention. Where if I read some of these other people that no one is, my perspective can help bridge these gaps. Right.

Ken Gunter  46:38

Absolutely. Well, and so, you know, that's actually a good point, too, because we talked about this a little bit at the beginning, like, you know, in the early 90s, the the world of strength and conditioning to your point was like, there was a very traditional way that you did things right. And to innovate was kind of like you had to it almost sounded like you had to fight this old guard, so to speak, it was peer reviewing.

Joe Kenn  47:00

Yeah, go all the way back to that. Yeah, I wasn't gonna do the edits. And, and rich was like, you got to do the edits. I said, these guys don't want to hear from me. I told you. It's the nsca. Right. I mean, I know what they're thinking. And he called Harvey. I remember I told you, Harvey was is a world renowned Olympic weightlifting coach. Right. And if anybody was going to tell me, I was wrong, it would have been him. Yeah. So the way I programmed it, and he told rich, he said, rich, you tell him to finish the article, because people need to see this. Awesome. So I, so that's 1997. Okay, oh, I finished the article. And it gets published. And it sparked a lot of interest. Right. Several years later, I'm at, you know, now I was at Boise for two more years, I went to Utah implemented the system at Utah, went to Arizona State implemented the system at Arizona State. And we're still seeing, you know, pretty good success, you know, we'd all like to see more wins and losses. You know, I think strength, strength and conditioning for football is very, it's hard to evaluate. I think I was gonna ask, a lot of times, it's it. How are you? Well, again, it's based on window, you know, you're getting evaluated on wins and losses, no matter what you do. And that's where it's hard. Because, you know, like, I've had, I've had coaches say that we had 30, guys benchpress 400, when you're three and nine. And again, and I got I got caught up a couple, like the number stuff a couple of times in my career where like, these numbers don't mean, you know, if, if

Ken Gunter  48:52

don't ask me for it,

Joe Kenn  48:54

I'll finish it. If we don't, if we don't see any type of whatever, transferring to the field. I mean, we can get as strong as possible, like, is 600 gonna make us squatting? 600 gonna make me any better if I squat? 550 and I'm not saying there's a cut off. But after a while, you got to evaluate. Okay. What else can we get this guy stronger, because he squats 550. But he can only launch 95 pounds. That's an issue. You see what I'm saying? So you start as you get out of this, meathead this, that I call it, and you start to evaluate. That's why I say there's different ways to be strong. Right? And, you know, I like so there's, can you be struck? Can you I don't think you can ever be strong enough strength. I'm talking strength from a relative step, but like, after a certain amount of time into squat. We're going to start changing the exercises because I don't need you to squat 550 if you already squat 500 but I may want you to front squat more or I may or like I said I may need you to improve your lunging. I may prove your single leg rear foot elevated squat, we, you know, you clean 300. But now let's try to really work on velocity based stuff, right? Yeah, I need that range where we can really, you know, people say we're using the Olympic lifts to improve explosiveness, right. But if we're doing terrible technique, and it's being muscled up, we're not getting the transferable trait, we hope. And we're losing out. And again, the ultimate, the ultimate goal is, is to improve confidence. If you train a guy, right? Or you train a woman, right, especially with the best people to train are women, because they don't get carried away with the number chasing. The only group of women who really get carried away with number chasing, and by experiences, are the women throwers, because there's a relevance to improve strength and throw, right? Yeah, oh, yeah, that's true. My son's a thrower I've seen it, you get stronger, you're probably going to go further, you get stronger, and football, you might not necessarily become a better football player, if you've gotten to a certain level of skill. So there's different things you have to formulate, when it comes to training athletes, that's totally different than training a competitive lifter?

Ken Gunter  51:18

Well, and you've said this a couple of times, too. And it's something that I think is so important to conceptualize, right, it's like, it's not about getting strong. It's not about how much you squat, the end result is like, Can we win games. So to your point, you know, what you keep saying is like, does it transfer, like great that you can squat the like, you already squat enough to where you're, you have the strength that you need, we now need to like round out all these other potential like strengths, weaknesses to make you a good player, not a good

Joe Kenn  51:47

weight lifter, and that's the same, it's the same thing in I'm sure, it's the same thing in business, you know, a guy can crunch numbers, but he can't, can't display the ability to, to show the value of those numbers and where they lead to. in business. That's why I think the those who understand the numbers and understand the app, the applicability of how those numbers are, those are the those are the most wealthiest venture capitalists and hedge fund leaders. Right? Are those who are able to understand algorithms and then apply them in a matter, aka Facebook to to do things that you never thought were you know, or the person who created zoom? Or the person who created squad cast? I mean, come on, man. Oh, yeah. or FaceTime? Or, or the fact that this phone right here, could could has my bank information, my I can pull up my reports, I can pull it, you know, it's like, come on, really let you know that that we're conversing. And we have, and we're on Wi Fi, right. Like, that makes sense to me. Every time I get in a plane, I'm like, who really had the understanding, and the and the genius to allow this monster machine to actually get off the ground. I mean, right, or a, or a huge barge that can actually stay buoyant in the water to people who have that intelligence to understand the, the mathematician equations and the things that make that work. That's just fascinating to me. I mean, yeah, I'm a weightlifting coach, I need to know how to convert kilos to pounds. I mean, you know, you know what I'm saying. And but

Ken Gunter  53:32

what's what's interesting, though, is like, and I completely agree, but to the outsider, and even people who lift even people who've maybe like played college sports, what? programming sets and reps? You know, what I mean, tempo, like all of these things can seem really overwhelming, quite frankly, you know, it's like, Look, it's okay, this is the goal that I have. This is where I'm trying to get to. So what you do to an outsider actually looks very complex. And one of the things I want to ask you, actually, because you did bring up the tier system. You know, it seems like you've created a structure. And actually, one of the questions I have is like, has it changed over time, that might be interesting, too. But you've created a structure where it makes it a bit more approachable. And I think, you know, depending upon what outcome or adaption you're looking for, gives you a relative framework that you can kind of work within. So I guess, you know, one of the things I would ask you is like, the tier system as it stands today, knowing that, you know, that was this also kind of created in 97 992. So like, from your standpoint, like, has the tier system kind of like stood the test of time?

Joe Kenn  54:48

Yeah. Well, it's still going strong. So I would say yes, and it's known around the world. Oh, yeah. Which is extremely humbling, like, right. So when we write the book, I'll tell you a funny story. about the book. So the book came about because now where my, my trajectory of my career is on the up, right? Yeah, I'm out. I'm out a name school. It's amazing how you have quick you get to be good when you're at a name school. And and it's funny because Boise State is now a named school. Boise State we were one double a football making the climb. We've had great coaches and, and great players and great administration, and great booster support. It is what it is today, which is phenomenal. And I'm glad to be a small part of the growth of that. Yeah. But when you're when you look at that what we've done is, has it stat as it stood the test of time. Why? Because it's sustainable. And when when I say what, what makes it sustainable is it's easily adapted to what a coach knows or doesn't know, at that time. That there they are in their experiences, because you can read a book and I'm sorry about that. No, no

Ken Gunter  56:07

worries, man, we're back. So I lost you at you said the reason is stood the test of time. And I think you're explaining because it was like basically like no matter what your level was, it was, you know, so

Joe Kenn  56:19

the sustainability of it is and again, long term sustainability. You're gonna be successful. Yeah. And and the thing is it gave you know, a lot of people don't like to use the word templated writer cookie cutter. That's a crock. Right? I don't get into that. Just like sports specific, lifted, lifted, lifted. But the the integrity of the model, like I told you, like I said, the first thing that gets lost, and that's why it's important that I do write another edition of the book to more be a little bit more deliberate in the steps of program design is a lot of people get, and I when I look at it now, I probably I did do a poor job of explaining these templates. It they believe they think it's cyclical based, like, like I would say, without with limited knowledge of tri phasic training. I know you've had kahlon Yeah, I wouldn't consider that a cyclical based program. Okay, it's based off of tempos of reps. It's based off certain rep schemes. It doesn't it doesn't necessarily matter what exercises or how you order your exercises. So where the tier system is the exact opposite. It is based off of highly structured organization. Yeah, variation of exercise. That's why when people always ask me, Hey, can you do try phasic with the tier system course that's a that's almost too simple to answer in my world. Right, right. Yeah, I know what you mean, because one is cyclical. And one is exercise choice in order.

Ken Gunter  57:59

Guys, that's a good differentiation. Because a cow cow was a fantastic guest, and I love his books as well. But that's a good point, right? It's like a lot of his stuff is like, hey, look, if you do this exercise, this compound movement, let's on this to your point, like rep and scheme, it's like

Joe Kenn  58:18

a central Oh, yeah. But then the next four weeks, it's this. So yeah, that has nothing to do with org structure and or an organization of exercise. But because I was the way I built it again, it's, I did a poor job. And I think I know why now. People, people feel it's the tier system cyclical base. And I'm reminded like, in my, you know, my life's work comes down to it's a three day total body or whole body session, based off of the structure and rotation of three movement categories. That's it. That's my life's work and 10 seconds, but the evolution of like you said, what, what has happened within that dynamic of the of developing a daily session, and then through the weekly session, and then the growth throughout the different lengths of times of a cycle? There's been some subtle changes, but the one thing that you have to remember just like I think, too quick, I would think the same thing that with cow when if you would ask cow, the way he writes those cycles, there's certain type of specific orders. And and that's the integrity of it. Right? I think he would say, you can do this with I'm sure I get like I said, I've limited knowledge. I'm sure there are certain things that can be rotated in and out but there's a certain structure to the cyclical way. He wants those types of training, training blocks to be written down that can't be broken. Like, again, there's probably you know, he doing in a fully centric cycle. That has to be followed by this. Right, not it. It can't be followed. By whatever. And that's the same thing with for our, our thing is, it's a structured rotation of exercises. So, say for the session T or the total body priority, the total body is number one, the lower body is number two, the upper body is number three, then you wrote you come back through total body, and then lower body. The truth is, depending on your, your belief system, I could care less what what goes in there. I just want How do you define total body then put a total body lift where it belongs? Yeah, you define lower body. And there's and there's discussions and be like that. Like, I've talked to a lot of people when you design your exercise pool, that's your pool. It's how you differentiate. Yeah, sizes like for me, and how my thought process goes. You know, Brett Contreras really popularized hip thrusts. Okay. Right. people consider I've talked to people that consider a hip thrust, a lower body exercise, I consider it a total body exercise, because it's hip extension. Okay, so anything with hip extension or hinging, like deadlifting, and variations of deadlifting? goes in total body, knee dominant work is lower body. Hmm. So anything that's a whole, like jumping, and med ball throwing, those to me are total body components? Yeah. So they would fit into the total body category, if I'm going to bring in multiple or single response jumps into a strength training session. Yeah, they're going to be classified and without complex thing, that's going to be classified a total body movement.

Ken Gunter  1:01:41

Got it.

Joe Kenn  1:01:42

But and you know, that might not be that way for you. And that's okay. Because if me and you were comparing programs, and I see you put a hip thrust as a lower body exercise, I would just ask you, is, are you classifying hip thrusts as a lower body? If you say, Yes, I'm not gonna debate you like, well, that's a total, like other, right, amen. Don't

Ken Gunter  1:02:03

get caught up in the

Joe Kenn  1:02:04

program. And just like I said, I believe in what I do 100% when I got to the NFL, the NFL has been predominantly a four day split program. And here I come and people all you know, you're going to change, I can't change. This is how I got here. This, I mean, I can't not throw away what I believe in. Because I got here, I just got to make it work. And we do because the fourth session or the fifth session, depending on how you want to structure your week, or are your auxilary days, or we called your Blitz work where you're getting in the extra work that doesn't fit into the main session, that's a lot of it is very individualistic, it could be programming to help you coming off, you've got a old shoulder injury, so you need to rewrite your shoulder, or you want to do more core, or you want to do arm farm, you know, there's all those things, that's your accessory work. And yes, and that's what fits in on the on our day. So when we and that's what I call the Blitz packages. Like if you want extra, we need to do extra work. That's where a lot of the individual comes in it is on the Tuesday work or whatever you want to call that day, the auxilary session. But now, depending on the amount of clientele. I'm learning now being away from coaching this year, and doing a lot of these little Medley types of three, what I call trifecta work, like three exercises that fit the same tier to build out these things. For more advanced athletes as I get with a limited numbers. I can do the tier system and be more individualistic during these three days with with the types of packages that we put together like you asked, like, what is some of the growth of the tier system? Well, when we first started, it was based on prime movers. So every upper body exercise was some version of a press. And we were doing all the accessory polls on Tuesday. Okay, well now as we build out, and we're going to build belief of protecting the body, whole what is really a whole body approach. It's these generalizations of movements that I've that I've utilized from other people and learned terminology from other people that we fit into this package. Well, now I even at a lower age bracket. A total body, upper body tier now for me, will generally have especially in the first three tiers, will generally have three exercises within that tier, that rotate through in a in a what I call a medley people would call a mini circuit. So for example, every upper body for tiers One, two and three. were used to be just one exercise,

Ken Gunter  1:04:47

you might just benchpress

Joe Kenn  1:04:49

right? Well now on that bench day say Friday's your big bench day session you you're going to have a horizontal row, bench and a posterior deltoid movement or postgame. Because again, it goes back to pairing pairing the same plane. So a horizontal press horizontal row. Got it. But we're going to probably do more volume for the row because it's a stabilizer stabilizer. And we we need to develop the gold muscles rather than the show bustles. We want to have, we want to have that part of it, we're going to go to the bench, because that's the priority of that session. Right? We're going to go to a posterior shoulder, because that's one of the most injury prone areas, regardless of sport, is posterior capsule in the posterior shoulder, whether it be rotator cuff, you know, all kinds of issues that happen. Oh, yeah, plus, it helps build what I call head support, or reinforcing the head, head stability, through training and the traps in the posterior shoulder. That's three unique muscle area muscle group areas that form big the triangle that supports your head. Yeah, yeah. Which was reinforcement techniques. So yeah, so these are the things that you learn how to build out, you know, know that as the older the athlete gets, like, I was a big, like, again, because of my relationships with powerlifting, when I first started, the first three tiers of lower body were all three bilateral squat movements. And then it became to squat movements. And now, depending on the, the athletes position or sport, it might only be one and I was a huge back squat dominated program. And for a lot of sports would be front squat, and not, not because of anything big, but just again, looking at applicability, posture assessment, the relationship of position to the athletic position, the fact that you can't have a bad front squat, but you can have a bad back squat. And, you know, there's so again, there's, it's, it's the evaluation of movement, it's the event and again, these are very general there's, there's very, there's a lot of people way smarter than me that I that I rely on when it comes to very specific things. Yeah, ours, the, you know, like, like when you're talking about the core work, which we call root, cause everything is rooted at the midsection, and then your limbs, or your arms and your legs, right. So if people want to talk about anti flexion, anti extension, why can't we just call it like planking, and you know, that whole ISO holds, right?

Ken Gunter  1:07:32

Because it doesn't look as good on the YouTube

Joe Kenn  1:07:34

again, so for me, there's merit in that. And that comes, that's part of what we call our route programming. And you got to, and you have to get and again, training the posterior chain or training the core. It used to be 23 sets of 25 crunches and three sets of 15 back extensions. It it's morphed into its own workout in itself now because yeah, you know, Mike, Mike Boyle, when I got exposed to Mike Boyle's work, he really stimulated my thought on the on the more emphasis on single leg variations, really looking at the front squat versus the back squat for athletes. And I think in 1999, I have to look through stuff, he had come up where there was like seven different components to core training like flexion, extension, knee to shoulder, shoulder knee, lateral flexion stabilization, rotation. So now you're building out all these exercise pools to make sure you hit all these different components of building a strong and robust core and now now the big things are like dead bugs, right? Oh, yeah. bird dogs to McGill Big Three, you know, so there's a lot of things that are going on and then there's a difference between like, and I'm learning something I picked up a couple of things from Dr. Aaron horsiness squat university where like, training for different things you want to be stiff and rigid. So for me, like I would do, what I learned was like if I'm doing a side bend for strength, like oblique strength, yeah, really all like a deadlift or squat day, I probably want to do a single leg, a single arm carry for for stiffness. Shoot, I'm saying Yeah, I

Ken Gunter  1:09:20

do. I do that makes sense.

Joe Kenn  1:09:22

So they're like little little things like that, like Okay, so now, and again, I've been doing a lot of planking and bracing stuff on our squat day, but like on a deadlift or a clean day, I want a little bit more stiffness. I need to do a little bit more of these types of movements. And again, this is stuff I'm learning now after how many years in the game, a little stuff that becomes it you know, Mike Robertson said it a long time ago a lot of people have said it but like, when I talk about like the evaluation of your programming is a lot of things like from a prehab or cleanup should. You should be already in your programs like Instead of having all we got to do prehab? Well, if you're doing you, if you're programming, right, that stuff should already be in the form of a variation of a single leg movement of different planes. Yeah, a lot of times we bet, you know, I believe in defending the sagittal plane where everything starts from there. I think sometimes we move into the frontal and transverse movements a little too quickly with load. But if you can't do a, if you can't do a standard lunge correctly, it's going to be tough to do a rotational lunge, right? So let's, everything's fundamental, everything's layered. Just like anything in growth, right? You got to start from the base, level up, the greater and the more dynamic, the bases, the wider the foundation, the stronger you're going to be. And that's really what our goal is, when it comes to the overall progression of athleticism is we want these guys to have a tremendous base, right? Yeah, their foundation to be so well structured, that when they get into position specific work, they have the abilities when they move into group work when they move in the team setting. And then when they move into competition, it all funnels up to an outstanding performance. And yeah, sure you can, if you're in the business world, or in your life settings, you can utilize that same thing. Oh, yeah. What is your quality foundation? What are the support structure of your business? And again, a lot of people might say, well, that's our culture is based on these values. Well, Does everybody know those values? Well, I don't know. So then how can that be your foundation? Like I've learned a lot by being a leader and trying to make things simple, but effective? Yeah, is, you know, we talked about mission statements, right? we've all talked about it. And if you've noticed, people are much better than others. But a lot of times a mission statement is really a mission paragraph for a lot of people. I can't remember a paragraph. I got into meditation and stuff, and Oh, interesting. And one thing that I learned, and it helps is, you know, you got mantras, right, so I call them mission mantras. And that's where all pieced together certain terms and try to relate them to things, because it's easier for me to remember those three terms. And then how I expand on that may change daily, the principles are the same, but because you're, you're not verbatim, throwing out a definition paragraph. Yeah, I can, you know, as long as I know, like, for example, my mission mantra for developing athletes is preparation, protection performance. Okay. So the base is preparation, that becomes education, development, protection, putting them in a, in a process of developing a plan that gives them like, we talked about the confidence that their body armor, both mentally and physically, is prepared to succeed and performance that when they go out to perform, they're confident that they're, that the preparation that they've done is well founded, they put together a plan that is protecting me, and now I can go out there and just go, you know, all out for as long as I can. And hopefully I succeed, and then the and then and then then that filters out into the the objective of being, you know, a champion. Yeah, and but then in like my, but then like, when I talk about exercise technique, I call it the three C's of exercise technique, relative competent and competitive, when we never want to see corrosive technique in our room because that means we it's irrelevant. And we're wasting time. We're promoting a atmosphere of potential injury. Right, and there has no shot of any type of transferable movement to sport. Now, by being corrosive, you may lift more weight, and people say, well, they that the guy thinks he's the guy thinks he benched. 400 because you helped him with the bar. Well, I'm not going to be able to help them when the guy who's bench is 300 beat them down on the field with

Ken Gunter  1:14:05

with good form and leverage.

Joe Kenn  1:14:07

Yeah. Or or why, why have a guy do a terrible 400 pound hang clean. But his vertical jumps only 24 inches? There's Yeah, if you if you clean correctly, you're gonna have a pretty solid vertical. Right? So let's clean lighter and brighter. And we'll probably jump higher.

Ken Gunter  1:14:27

Right?

Joe Kenn  1:14:28

You know, so again, there is just a lot of things that I've come because I know if it if it works for me, the people who are who are who are able to retain things better than I am, will definitely work for them. Because it's it's almost too simple for them.

Ken Gunter  1:14:43

To see too simple to forget. Oh, yeah.

Joe Kenn  1:14:46

I mean, you know, like, again, ya know, and

Ken Gunter  1:14:48

that's like, our how our brains work, right? It's like when it's something that's like, memorable or catchy or rhymes. I mean, that's why I

Joe Kenn  1:14:54

say you work for me, right? Yeah. And I tell you look, our our mission mantra Year is preparation, protection. And, you know, production. Yeah, performance production, right. And I'm going to explain to you what those are. But in the end, when you're talking to coach, the tennis coach, because you see the tennis team, and they say, well, what's your what's your all's mission down there? And you say, Oh, well, it's preparation, production, and production. And then you're going to verbalize that in your own way, you're not going to write, you're going to talk about preparation means I'm going to sit down with the team, and we're going to go over the card, and we're going to explain it, we're gonna go through different types of technique, I'm going to sit down with you, and we're going to discuss what you think is necessary that I put in the program, we're gonna talk, we're gonna, we're gonna talk about nutrition, rest, you know, that stuff can even go into protection, too. But, yeah, we're gonna meet with therapy, Pete, you know, our physios to see what types of injury patterns come, are very much dominant in the sports and what movements they believe we can bring into our program, whether it be in the beginning, pre activity prep, or specific exercises in the main session, then we go into protection. Now we build this, we build this model, we've gotten that we've we've prepared this thing, we've created this, you know, a smorgasbord of stuff. But now we've got to funnel it into this performance model to excuse me this protection model, which is your, which is your programming. And then, if that is dialed in, right, and you put in your conditioning, your plyo, you're sprinting, you're changing direction. Now you look at it from a production, did we produce a more robust, resilient, and increased KPI, athlete, General based athlete? Right, we've done that. And that's why I got a little thrown off, then we've done that, then that carries over to their coaching staff, which is specific physical preparation. And then that's the fourth p that's, yeah,

Ken Gunter  1:17:02

yeah. No, it makes, it makes a lot of sense in a kind of the theme I'm starting to see here. And, you know, part of the reason I asked that question like, has the tier system held up over time, like the answer makes complete sense. Because like, it's a structure that it sounds like, allows for a lot of innovation and experimentation. And, you know, like, to your point, like personalization based upon the sport, where you're trying to make these, you know, these three P's transferred to,

Joe Kenn  1:17:31

yeah, like my son, my son's an intern at Iowa State and his, his boss asked him to write a tennis program. And this is his first real delving into somebody saying, oh, write a program. And he sent it to me, and I was pretty impressed. But there was a few things I would have done different, but my experience is different. Right? And I and I look at it way different now, because I'm so much older. And but when I looked at I said, Okay, the guy, the guy's thinking that the good thing was, he's thinking in the right direction, like, he didn't pick x. And like I said, there's no any bad exercises, but it's the applicability of an exercise. Right, right. And I didn't think I think he did a good job in his needs analysis, and more importantly, his risk analysis on how he picked certain exercises that where I could see other coaches just say, Well, we've got to do this, because it builds this, but yet, there's a lot of different variations that are more safer. Can you talk about the risk

Ken Gunter  1:18:28

risk analysis specifically? Because you mentioned that?

Joe Kenn  1:18:31

So let's say, say, let's just say tennis, for example, right? Well, their hands are extremely important, which means their wrists are extremely important. Why would I have them clean?

Ken Gunter  1:18:45

Right? Okay.

Joe Kenn  1:18:46

It's that simple, right? It's, you're just looking for the simplest justification. Yeah. And even then, like I would, I would have them front squat. But even then, I'm thinking, like I told my son, if you're going to have a front squat and have any issues with their wrists, then you got to use straps. Yep. You know, or go into but nowadays, because we've been exposed to some stuff, you can go to kettlebell. And tip with what we call a kettlebell squat. Some people goes further, like we go to kettlebell anterior loaded, which, you know, goblet, there's a lot of things that we can mimic. And again, we want our tennis players to be strong, but I don't think you know, not at the risk

Ken Gunter  1:19:31

of injury.

Joe Kenn  1:19:32

I don't think you're testing them in a front squat, or back squat is gonna, you know, and again, why again, you you you thinking about the wrist in the front squat, but for them again, what's up, what's another thing that's very important to them shoulders? Yeah. So if I have a back squat, and then like, you'll see with a lot that puts extreme stress on the external rotators you know, especially you know, and that's why you see a lot of a lot of the bigger athletes have go all the way out because Because they don't have the the mobility to put there to get tight. Yeah. So again, if you put that much stress on your external rotators squatting in your does that Is that really necessary for the for a tennis player or golfer? Right? And even more so a golfer I don't know if I'd ever I don't know I, I would I like bilateral squatting just for balance in my programming. But I don't know if I was training a golfer brand new or not, if I ever would go any further than, you know, some type of kettlebell or goblet squat unless the government was you know, a tiger woods type of person give me a little something more to challenge myself. A lot of times that that training is different. Now they do a lot, you know, lunging and, and rotation work, that would be emphasized a lot. Like instead of Olympic lifting, I might, I might have them do a tremendous amount of, you know, high impact what I call launching med balls into a wall. Yeah, in a rotation fashion, because that, that gives me a total body component with explosive capacities that is very, very conducive to them being successful, tennis, tennis players also. So those are those are the things like do I do I need? Do I need a snatch jerk? Power clean those types of athletes? No, that's that's a risk analysis. There's nothing wrong. Because if I'm training a thrower, that probably doing those exercises,

Ken Gunter  1:21:25

right? No, that makes that makes sense, when actually, I was something I would love to. And I know I've taken up a lot of your time. So maybe we can make this. One of the last questions. couple questions I asked you but you know, for you within the tier system. You said when when this was kind of developed? And it sounds like I think still today, right? There is a maybe the industry split on Hey, what's better total body versus split? You know, for you what why is it so important that it is a total body approach? And when I say total body, maybe for the people? Yeah, you can explain what I'm trying to say here.

Joe Kenn  1:22:03

Well, again, like I gave you that simple rationalization before Yes, yes. Simple just a vacation is how our most again, take away power Olympics. And you know, the Olympic, you know, people who have special needs because of injury.

1:22:21

Okay, but

Joe Kenn  1:22:22

generally in my population. How is most athletics played?

Ken Gunter  1:22:27

Oh, yeah. Whole body? Yeah, whole body. Yeah. For those listening, he's looking at me, like, come on.

Joe Kenn  1:22:35

No, but I mean, you knucklehead,

Ken Gunter  1:22:36

but you know how it's played. But

Joe Kenn  1:22:38

there's a lot of teams that have won a lot of championships doing a four day split. Yeah, that's why I say if program, programming it, everybody's got their programming, right. And everybody's gonna stick to what got in there. And I'm gonna stick to my that's why I said, the programmer has to have the belief. What that looks like, does not matter if the athlete can tell, man, this guy, this is what we got to do that you can see this guy is all in on this. We mean, we got a I mean, it's just a, it's just a belief, right? If I believe in it, it's going to come across, much more confidently than if I don't like Oh, man. The last program I did suck. Let me try this. And the guys are like, start to ask you questions and you can't answer questions. Right? So there there is. And because of the principles of things, like, again, Westside has Westside barbell has a unique four day template, right? But the principle again, but the cyclical principles of Westside fit my model tremendously. Hmm. So, again, I don't I don't utilize a Westside template to train my athletes, but the cyclical and the, the the, the rotation of things that they do fit within my stuff. tremendously. I've had tremendous success, utilizing the things that Louis Simmons exposed us to that we're already out there, but nobody had brought it to the forefront.

Ken Gunter  1:24:16

Man, I'm sorry.

Joe Kenn  1:24:18

No, I think it's my end because we I do have some issues sometimes with our Wi Fi. And it's happened a couple of times on some other people's podcasts also,

Ken Gunter  1:24:27

oh, I I don't mind it. I just I feel bad making you have to keep locking back

Joe Kenn  1:24:34

in a deal. But like I was saying, so Louis, stuff fits, you know, the the maximal effort, the dynamic effort, the repetitive method, well, that that fits some of my programming model of the tier system with the old heavy, moderate light. So instead of going heavy, moderate light, you go, maximal effort, dynamic effort, repetitive method. So that's how some of the that's the difference between a base template and what I call an elite template. But the truth is, that was the cycle I tore, I blew it in the book, I came up with this traditional template, I called it an elite template, but really, I should have called them traditional six cycle and the elite cycle, and not through a lot of people off. So, guys, when you read that book, that'll throw people off because the exercises are the same. It's the attempt of the exercise that changes. Okay, when you're with a traditional model, you know, generally if you go heavy, moderate light, the percentage change, but the rep scheme stays the same. So for an a general, the general example I always use is, so if the heavy day is five sets of five at 85, the moderate days, five sets of five at 75, the light days, five sets of five at 65. Hmm. But if I'm doing the Elite Model and utilizing maximal effort, repetitive effort and dynamic effort, that might look like, okay, we're going to do five sets of five at 80%. I mean, that's just I'm just randomly picking up for the heavy day. But now on the dynamic day, we're going to do 15, doubles at 45%. And then on the repetitive day, we're going to do three sets of 12. Right? So that that's the manipulation of different means of strength within a concept. And

Ken Gunter  1:26:33

it still fits within.

Joe Kenn  1:26:35

Because all I'm doing now is so like the heavy day is tier one. Yeah, the moderate day is tier two. And the light day is tier three, depending on how I do those cycles. You know, those maximal effort day is tier one, the dynamics tier two and repetitive dir three, yeah. And then that fluctuates throughout the different tiers. As we go. So then we're like, it could be, you know, maximal effort squat, tier one, dynamic effort, bench, tier two, and then a volume repetitive effort, like a clean poll for tier three. Right? So it all it all, it all flows, it's again, it's a flow, it's ebb and flow. It's how things match.

Ken Gunter  1:27:17

Yeah, that makes that makes sense, though.

Joe Kenn  1:27:19

Well, it's, again, it was, I was fortunate that coach Thompson allowed me some creative freedom or this never exists. And again, that so he deserves a lot of thanks for his trust in me, when he hired me to take these sports. And, and again, it was it was a it was the combination of I had creative freedom. And Coach dharti challenging me without challenging me by saying, I'm tired of the old football programs. Yeah, so the tier system was built for Olympic. It was built based off of my first interactions, in college with women's sports and not in Olympic sports, what they called my revenue back then, my two years I coached in high school, I was using a four day split, because that's what I knew. And I was using it. I was highly influenced by it's not what I knew. It's what I believe what was supposed to be done. Yeah, when I was in college, like I said, I, we were a three day a week program, high intensity training with some power lifts and an Olympic lifts mixed in, but because of the conflicts between the coach and the strength coach, I may have done hand cleans five times in five years. And it was on our end, it was on our court card every week. So it was one of those deals, right? You know, you learn that's where I learned to justify stuff. Mm hmm. Because when a coach calls you in and ask you a question about your program, you better have a answer, right? Can't you can't hem and haw. What do you mean?

Ken Gunter  1:29:02

Yeah, there's got to have a concrete reason why

Joe Kenn  1:29:04

that's not gonna work that way. So again, you learn a lot from that. But when but when I went to start coaching, because of what I what I had studied was predominantly most programs before day splits, and so on. So I studied heavily. Coach john gamble at that time, was a strength coach at Virginia. And Mike Gentry was a strength coach at Virginia Tech at that time, and I studied their programs extensively. And my my program was built on that on there to programming. And I did that for two years in high school. And like I said, when I went to Boise State, well then when I went back to wait for excuse me for before I went to Boise State, I was back in that atmosphere of the three day a week type of work, but I was training some guys individually and we were doing a little bit more percentage base stuff with them because I'd learned more about percentages. Yeah. And then I got, you know, then again, when I got to Boise State in July of 1991, is when I started working with these athletes. And then by 1992, the first revisions and additions of the tier system started making its way into Boise State athletics. And now, you know, 30 something years later, man, we're still going strong, we have a lot of people who have had a lot of success with it. We're trying, I'm trying to do some things educationally wise now, because a lot of people, like we talked about, say, they're doing the tear system, and they're breaking some of the integrity of it. The integrity is the template. Like you, you can you can manipulate a lot of things like we talked about, but if you start messing around with the order of the exercises, you're no longer doing the tear system.

Ken Gunter  1:30:52

Yeah. And and, you know, again, we could probably talk about this all night, but that order within the tier system, you know, what is the the method? so to speak to that to that madness, right. Like, like, first starting is important. Yeah.

Joe Kenn  1:31:09

So everything's based off of athleticism. Right? Yeah. And then in the case, and at this point in time, we'll just keep it where it's at. Oh, I got it. That was just a boss just texted me.

Ken Gunter  1:31:26

Oh, no, I know, I know how that goes. Now. You're just you're just telling me like why it's so critical. Morgan is the way it is.

Joe Kenn  1:31:31

And again, you can and you can manipulate today's I mean, we've gone for a while, but let's just say this. Yeah. total body movement, like we talked about, to me has a high value in athletics. Some people don't believe in Olympic lifts, I get it. I believe if it's done properly, you can do that. So total body is number one, like that's your number. So if I could only do one exercise, I would probably pick some version of a total body lift. Mm hmm. Because it would it would get a lot of the components. Right. Right. Right. Then, what's the next most important in athletics? Your legs? Yeah, we'll do that. So so the first day of the week, I want to hit total body. While the second most important thing for most athletics is lower body, your legs, right? That's going to be two and then Okay. And then upper body is just a feeder. Okay, great. So that's your order across. That's how the that's how the weekly start the week started. You come in and you do your total bottom up, what

Ken Gunter  1:32:33

is the most important thing that you need to hit if we hit nothing else,

Joe Kenn  1:32:36

right? And then what's the next day? What's the next day, so then you take that, so you got t l u going across? Well, then you just run it down on the same session. So Monday, t l u? Yep. Wednesday, l UT. Friday, utl. And then if you based off the heavy, moderate light, you go from a heavy to a light. Got it? And then and then you go and then like so you're, you're always you're always the next day on a light except for the upper body day, because you have two days off for the weekend. Right? And that's how you that's how we manipulated it. And, and it worked.

Ken Gunter  1:33:18

Yeah, no, that makes and that actually was a really advanced.

Joe Kenn  1:33:23

So everything's based off of the three by three. And then to add more work, you just start the cycle over. So we went three, five, and I actually had a seven. But what I found out on the seven was a lot of ancillary work. Now that's become things we've talked about, like posterior chain and things that we do in the pre activity prep. So there's really two sections to daily plan. There's the pre activity preparation, I don't call it a warm up, because it's not warming up is very, that'd be a bit of a walk a lap, right?

Ken Gunter  1:33:59

Yeah, if you don't mind explaining this is this is one of the things I want to definitely get. So I would love to hear

Joe Kenn  1:34:03

that as a pre activity preparation gives it purpose. So what you're doing is you're you're prepping the body and has the same basic like, remember, like warm up, improved court court temperature, you know, lube up tendons and ligaments, I mean, you know, you've seen them all that stuff. It's the same principle. But now it's very specific, though, to the programming of the strength, like a lot of times, I'm sure like, even in your day, before you went in the weight room, you'd go out and do high knees. And, you know, you'd line up like, it's

Ken Gunter  1:34:40

like, you're gonna do track and you do that and it would be consistent. It'd be the same stuff, no matter no matter what was gonna be the lift.

Joe Kenn  1:34:47

We're going to do what I call, reset work, we'll be on your own. That's kind of like mobility work. Okay, foam roll if you need it. That would be stuff I would recommend. If you really believe in it. to do some basic mobility and and get your body's joint centration, and all that other stuff, and do some rocking and crawling and some of those primal moving stuff would be something that we, we may do that on the field for fuel work, but we won't do it on that would be something I would tell you. That's something you need to jump in before we start your session, and get your foam rolling and your self myofascial release stuff done. Yeah, but we're gonna come in, and we're gonna do what I follow Mike Robertson seminars. So you've got this organization of seminars, I've added a bunch. So you're going to do what I call reboot. And for the lack of a better term reboot is like activation work. That's stuff that you are going to, we're going to add in with some banded movements. So it could be a some Hip hip and add work, it could be a lateral lunge, it could be a hip lift, or it could be a vertical pull apart, but it's something banded, to give you a little bit of resistance at to help just get those things moving, like reboot refi, or just just get a woke up. Yeah, just

Ken Gunter  1:36:06

wake these things up. And that's the intention of it. It's it's like the

Joe Kenn  1:36:14

based off of what the what the emphasis of the day is

Ken Gunter  1:36:16

on it makes,

Joe Kenn  1:36:18

it makes sense that we're going to do root work. So your core, yeah, and then depending on the athlete, and the sport, we will do some type of reinforcement or network, depending on the athlete or the sport will depend on what that volume is. If you're in high volume, high volatile, high collision sports, we're going to emphasize that more than if you're non contact tennis, golf. But there's something to be done about posture alignment. So it all starts, you know, here down, so right, right gonna do so I don't want everybody to have 20 inch necks. But I want them to be, again, from a posture mechanic standpoint, you know, especially nowadays, when we all have what the you know, the,

Ken Gunter  1:37:04

I'm doing it, I'm doing it right now. So I'm on camera, what am I.

Joe Kenn  1:37:08

So we're gonna do that. And then we're going to do some readiness work, which is going to be some high volume, lather up types of stuff that are going to get you get prepared. And the main session, then the main session, depending if it's three tiers are five, we're gonna knock out five, and we're gonna we're gonna wrap it up.

Ken Gunter  1:37:29

How long? How long does this pre activity prep typically take just for for me.

Joe Kenn  1:37:36

If it's done it, I do mine in blocks. So every one of the things that I talked to you about, I do very specific, so I'm going to do my route by itself, my reset by itself by my reboot by its, well, I can't. But for the athletes, that'll be a circuit. So they'll like root reboot readiness, reinforcement, they'll come around and do another cycle of exercises. So generally comes three, it'll come out to be about three x three rounds. Okay, four distinct categories. 12, unique exercises. Oh, cool. And then, like I said, and then depending on the sport, the reinforcement or the network could be additional work.

Ken Gunter  1:38:24

Well, and maybe this is a good segue, because I really appreciate how much time you've taken to explain all this with me. But you have some awesome videos on your channel on YouTube. Where actually can watch you take athletes through it. And I've enjoyed watching that as well. It's my son going through all his son. That's all I wanted to ask. So wait, I've got two YouTubes that you talked about the inside the house YouTube. I'm talking about inside the house. And then there's a What is it the big

Joe Kenn  1:38:53

seven, seven? I think so. Yeah. So my youngest son is a lot on that. But But if you go if you want to see what a tier system workout looks like, or a training session, I should call train sets looks like on the inside that house with Joe Can I think it is Joe Bay? I think

Ken Gunter  1:39:08

that's the one yeah, there's a

Joe Kenn  1:39:10

there's a four layer deal that has for exit his exact programming he did this summer for throwing.

Ken Gunter  1:39:17

That's what I watched. That's what I watched. Yeah. And that's great.

Joe Kenn  1:39:20

And then we sped up the pre activity prep, but you can see all the different movements and not and that'll take a you know what I would call highly qualified athlete. Less than 15 minutes.

Ken Gunter  1:39:32

Yeah, perfect.

Joe Kenn  1:39:33

So you're hopping

Ken Gunter  1:39:34

Yeah, yeah, no, and I'm gonna link to all that too, because I think it'll help people visualize a lot of the stuff we've talked about as well which will be great. So I mean, look, I would love to sit here and talk strong man with you as well because I know that's another another path,

Joe Kenn  1:39:50

which I share, weakest strong man in the world. I'm on the seventh. Now I'm even weaker. So I don't even know if we will

Ken Gunter  1:39:59

you Will you do any competitions or is it just purely like,

Joe Kenn  1:40:03

I did one competition. And so I can say I've actually competed as a strongman competitor. Okay. Actually, yeah, so I did that in 2009. All right. As a Masters athlete, I've competed in powerlifting I've not competed in weightlifting. powerlifting. I did my last meet a couple years ago because I was chasing a goal of 500 at 50. Oh, wow, deadlift 500 again at 50 years old. That's great. I missed it at 50 and came back and did it the next year at the same meet at 51.

Ken Gunter  1:40:39

Oh, awesome. So let me let me ask you this. What what because I love that, you know, we didn't talk about as much today but I know that you were big on actually getting under the bar, letting your guys see you put in the work. You know, what gets you fired up now? Like what what are the goals that are keeping you excited about what you're doing for yourself?

Joe Kenn  1:40:58

I'm around athletes all day. You have to be young at heart, right? Yeah. Age is a limiting factor. I mean, let's not now I have the utmost respect. Like I'm a big Brian Shaw fan because Brian worked with us at Arizona State but my cool I didn't know my true like, really? If you want to call them heroes in strong man, our mark Felix and Nick best because marks by a navitus. And Nick best is 51 years old and you watch them guys. And it's like, I have the utmost respect, because I know what my strength capabilities are right now. Yeah, it is. It is ridiculous. What those guys, those guys for World Strongest Man, it's unbelievable. So I look at it like my, my goals are to inspire people who are more like me because those guys are exceptional that hey, I was I was an ex athlete, I love to compete. I've always loved to train. So I'm going to right now it's a little bit tougher because I don't have a purpose there's not a goal like I'm not compete. So a lot of variations all the time, but I'm trying to train as heavy as I can go based off what my body feels that day like some days I can move better than others range of motion and like a deadlift is better than others. So I'll do something but then the next time around, I might not feel the same so I gotta flip it up. But I tried to train I don't I don't think I train maximally anymore. And that's not because I don't want to just at this point like last year I had the this year has been a 2020 was I was had nothing to do with COVID it just wasn't a good year for me to get strong but 2019 man I did some things that even at any age, I did a 500 for four I did 500 for a triple on a high handle on a trap bar beltless that I've never done in my whole life. No kids 4950 not 5353 Yeah, I I safety bar squat at 40543 hadn't done that since I was powerlifting in like 2000 in the 2000s and the other was the other there was one other thing I did that I can't remember right now there was golly What can I remember there was one other thing I did that I was like damn those Oh, I did a like a RDL vert pull deadlift. I did 315 for a with a 52 sounds a chain and that that was my most impressive of the year. Oh

Ken Gunter  1:43:43

man. my hamstrings hurt thinking about

Joe Kenn  1:43:48

I was very happy about that. And now I have a lot a lot different right now training. So it's hard. I'm looking to I've always reevaluate myself. Like I said, I don't want to call it rehab, I like to call it just a rebuild. I'm trying to find different ways to rebuild stuff and and try to maintain it as strong as and again, strength now is very, it's a relative term. There's not a like, I was never super strong anywhere like I was a class to power lifter. That's what I was. I mean, Joe average right off the bat class two, that's when you look at the structures of the classifications in powerlifting. The class two lifters and average lifter that's what I want, but I love to compete. And I was a big believer that even to this day, if I feel like I want to max deadlift, whether it's 100 pounds, 200 pounds, 300 pounds. I'll probably go to a meet to do it just so it was done. That to me, I don't got to my thing. Anybody to do it, but I do believe you have to train. Whatever that means, right? You have to show your athletes that you're still putting in the work, huh? What that work is it's up to you I'm a powerlifter by trade. So I'm going to train that similar to that model. And then you know, like, I do have some good morning work terrible at it, but I wouldn't my athletes are not going to do good boys, we're going to train different modalities to strain the train the erectors in a, in a more conducive risk free environment. Very unique exercise, you've got to be, you gotta you got to have your head in the game for good mornings. And like I said, most athletes, his number one goal isn't to lift weights. So their heads are in the game, but they're not in the game. A lot of times in the weight room. So you got to write, you got to be smart on your choices. So I just said, I just I'm, I like, like, when I show people, like if you watch my stuff now, and it's great. There's no ridiculous amount of load. But what I'm showing is, Hey, man, I'm training hard. And I'm, you know, 50 plus years old will be 55. You know, this year, this year, I'll be 55. And that's what it's all about, like, just training hard and just proven that Hey, man, you got to put the work in.

Ken Gunter  1:46:07

Yeah. Oh, it's perfect. Well, and you know, that that's a that's a good segue here. Because you you do put out a lot of educational content. Where Where are the best places that I can point folks? You know, to what you're doing today?

Joe Kenn  1:46:21

Yeah, so I like to show me I say so a lot. But my my website is big house powered calm. It's it used to be subscriber base. Now. It's all the contents free.

Ken Gunter  1:46:33

No, awesome

Joe Kenn  1:46:34

The only difference is that you'll see they'll say on the house, and they'll say inside the house. Well, inside the house. Used to be the subscriber based.

Ken Gunter  1:46:43

Yeah.

Joe Kenn  1:46:44

Excuse me. So to activate that material, I do ask for an email. Yeah, but everything except for what's on the store is free content. Awesome. Then I add big house power is my twitter and instagram feeds.

Ken Gunter  1:47:00

Yeah. And then you and then you've got the two YouTube channels.

Joe Kenn  1:47:02

Yeah. Don't though the big house 77 is, is not defunct because I'd lose all those videos, but it's my personal one. It hasn't been updated. But the the one now that I'm trying to promote more is the inside the house with house can one that's the one that we're trying to get. And again, it's hard, like, you know, putting together pocket when you know, when you're when you're a one man show, you have these delusions of grandeur that you're going to put all this content out. But you're the editor. You're the talent, right? filmer. And sometimes you do these films, and it's like, Man, this doesn't look good, but you don't have anybody working the camera you're doing still, you know, like you, you got to move it here. So you get this shot, then you got it. And it takes a lot. And when you train by yourself, which is not conducive to a lot of people, but it's just the way it is for me, because of my schedule.

1:47:59

You, you, you

Joe Kenn  1:48:01

I don't like to stop and reset stuff because I do a lot of things on tempo and time. Right. And so it's it's, it's crazy. And I feel like I you know, I talked to more people and then you find out they got a team. And I'm like, okay, no wonder why your content, right? Your your followers are up to million because you're, you're not gonna miss out and you got two people behind the scenes and right, right now I'm the guy behind the scenes.

Ken Gunter  1:48:27

Yeah, well, you're putting out great stuff. And like I said, I've had a lot of fun watching it over the last week, a lot of the recent stuff that I did, so I'll make sure to link to everything. And again, just thank you. So this has been a lot of fun. And,

Joe Kenn  1:48:42

Dan, I appreciate the question. Like I said, Ben, I appreciate anybody who's willing to listen. I mean, we kind of went all over the place, but I thought we had some good chats.

Ken Gunter  1:48:51

Absolutely. Absolutely.