Welcome back to the Flex Diet Podcast. I’m Dr. Mike T Nelson, and today I’ve got a great conversation lined up with Coach Troy Beauregard from Canada. We dig into one of my favorite rabbit holes: performance tracking for athletes. We cover why it’s so important to keep tabs on what’s happening in the gym and how you don’t need super-fancy gear to start collecting meaningful data. Of course, we also geek out on the fun toys, from simple tools to cutting-edge tech and even some AI applications that are creeping into sports science. Troy shares insights on hockey-specific acceleration testing, what load monitoring looks like in basketball, and how recovery programs can use force plates and other equipment to really dial things in. The big theme? How modern technology can help athletes perform better and recover smarter—without frying their nervous system in the process. If you’re into training, tech, and finding smarter ways to help athletes (or yourself) adapt and recover, you’re going to love this one. Sponsors: Beyond Power Voltra 1: https://www.beyond-power.com/michael13 PNOE - tell them Dr Mike T sent ya: https://pnoe.com Killswitch for sleep: https://www.switchsupplements.com/DRMIKE use code DRMIKE to save $$
Welcome back to the Flex Diet Podcast. I’m Dr. Mike T Nelson, and today I’ve got a great conversation lined up with Coach Troy Beauregard from Canada. We dig into one of my favorite rabbit holes: performance tracking for athletes.
We cover why it’s so important to keep tabs on what’s happening in the gym and how you don’t need super-fancy gear to start collecting meaningful data. Of course, we also geek out on the fun toys, from simple tools to cutting-edge tech and even some AI applications that are creeping into sports science.
Troy shares insights on hockey-specific acceleration testing, what load monitoring looks like in basketball, and how recovery programs can use force plates and other equipment to really dial things in. The big theme? How modern technology can help athletes perform better and recover smarter—without frying their nervous system in the process.
If you’re into training, tech, and finding smarter ways to help athletes (or yourself) adapt and recover, you’re going to love this one.
Sponsors:
Available now:
Episode Chapters:
Flex Diet Podcast Episodes You May Enjoy:
Connect with Troy:
Get In Touch with Dr Mike:
Dr Mike T Nelson: [00:00:00] Welcome back to the Flex Diet Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Mike Nelson. On this podcast, we talk about all things to increase performance, add muscle, improve body composition, and do all of it without destroying neuro health in a flexible framework. Today on the program, we've got my buddy coach Troy from.
Canada and he is talking and we are talking all about different aspects of performance. Even if your goal is to add muscle and improve body composition, I would make an argument that tracking your performance is the best thing to do to make sure that you are staying in line for those particular goals.
So even clients I have who are working on. Purely physique goals. We keep track of their performance in the gym very closely. And this again, can just be a simple notebook. It [00:01:00] doesn't need to be technology, which we'll talk a lot about technology here, but it can be rather, rather simple. And in this podcast we get into all sorts of fun stuff from monitoring on game day advances in sports testing and tech.
A hockey specific acceleration, testing and analysis, load monitoring, important of speed, change of direction, even cognitive components and some other innovation training technologies. And at the end, we briefly talk about what is the future of AI in sports science. So I think you'll love this podcast. I gotta see Troy at ISSN again.
And what's cool is not only is he. A high level individual who understands the physiology and the mechanisms that are going on is actually using technology to perform testing to see if his hypothesis are correct [00:02:00] or not. And I think that's the part that gets am missed a lot of times with technology is it now allows us to test in ways we weren't really able to before.
So in many circumstances, you can get data after recession or after one test. Instead of having to put together a whole, you know, 12 or 16 week, or 48 week or even longer cycle to see what the results were, depending upon what you are testing. So sponsors today related to testing, we've got element, if you're looking for tasty electrolytes, I'm drinking the raspberry one today.
Teton will be back there in the process of coming out with some brand new. Formulations and I can't say anything else other than that, but it'll hopefully will be out very soon. So if you've gone to their website or if you've tried to find any, the older product is not on the market currently anymore.[00:03:00]
They're trying to phase that out for the newer stuff coming out very soon. So as soon as we have an announcement, I will let you know. And then on the testing side we've got check out the Beyond Power VUL Ultra One device.
And what's super cool about it is you can do testing with it. You can do isometric testing, you can do ISOKINETIC testing, and in the podcast here we talk about even fancier equipment from other names that may be $50,000. That do some really, really cool stuff, but the size of that machine and the price tag are just out of yet for vast majority of almost everyone.
But what's cool about the Vol Ultra one is you can do that type of testing in the device. It is a small unit. You can bolt right onto a cage or a pole, or I didn't have one of their little platforms. Now, if you're doing curls or deadlifts or things like that. And what I really like about it [00:04:00] is you can instantly change and do heavy eccentrics and split that even within the lift.
So the example I've been using lately is if you're doing a seated row, I can pull back with a hundred pounds concentric. So pulling the bar towards me and it'll auto detect that end range of motion, and I can then add an eccentric component of whatever I want. So maybe now it's going to pull the handle back to the device, the eccentric portion of that seated row, and I can add an additional, say, 50 pounds to it.
So concentrically, I'm pulling at a hundred. And then eccentrically, I'm going up to 150 and the device will go up to 200 pounds and it's direct drive. So 200 pounds is pretty significant. And the other cool part is I have it set up on there for peak wattage. And so each time I pull back on the concentric, it gives me a peak watt rate out.
And when I'm no longer able to hold that wattage, even with the heavy [00:05:00] eccentric, then I model regulated. I know I'm done with that particular set. So check them out. Full disclosure, I liked it so much. I requested to Elliot that I'd be an affiliate, so I am an affiliate for that. So assume I'm just a shell for Beyond Power.
Also if you're interested in metabolic carts you can hit me up about the pin NOI device. This is a metabolic cart that I use at my place here for all testing. It is portable, it is gas cald. It will do RER and it'll pretty much do everything the bigger, more expensive units will do. Again, it's not a cheap device but I've always wanted to have my own metabolic heart, so I've been able to use that for quite a few years.
Again, I am an affiliate for them. So just reach out to me if you have any questions about that. Enjoy this podcast here with Troy and myself talking all about technology.
Troy B: [00:06:00] Hello.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Hey man, how you doing? I'm good, how are you? Good, good. Good. I'm just, uh, turning my phone off here before I forget. Yeah, same.
Troy B: How's
Dr Mike T Nelson: life in Canada, eh? Right.
Troy B: It's real humid today, so I'm hoping that breaks, so.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah, it's kind of been the way it's been down here. Unfortunately, I haven't been outside much today.
I've had a bunch of stuff going on, but, uh, Yeah, it's been a little, a little toasty warm down here the past few days. Whereabouts are you, Mike? Uh, I'm in the Twin Cities, just Wepper Lake, so north, 20 minutes from the Twin Cities. Gotcha, cool. Yeah, and you're further north than I am by quite a bit, correct?
Troy B: Yeah, so about four hours north of Toronto. Oh, okay, got it. So, pretty much, like, straight, well, it's a little bit shorter now because they've opened up, it was two lanes, highways, traveling from there to Toronto for a long time. [00:07:00] Okay. So finally we're getting to the 1900s and having a couple more lanes, you know.
Nice. And what's the nearest big city again? So nearest big city, I guess, like, that would be Toronto to us. So we've got, we're kind of like in the middle where we've got Toronto to the south. And then, uh, east we'll have Ottawa. And, uh, so that's pretty much where I kind of where we sit in Ontario. Got
Dr Mike T Nelson: it.
Cool. Uh, yeah, any particular topic you're interested in chatting about today? This is pretty informal.
Troy B: Yeah, no, just I guess some of the stuff maybe we even talked about down at the conference and then, um, I think some of the pieces, I feel that would be pretty interesting, but I mean, it would be, uh, kind of touching on some of the stuff that we did for in -game monitoring for the basketball team that I work with here, the, uh, the Sudbury Fives, so we used some of the inertial measurement units, like, from, uh, [00:08:00] Plantega to, uh, Yeah, so we, we, it was super cool.
I think maybe the story behind that's kind of cool. How we even, how I pulled those in, like the reasons why was, was kind of cool. So, um, and, uh, I don't know, stuff like that, I guess.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah, so maybe we just even pick a rough topic of like. I don't want to say maybe performance and predictive testing, even though I know a lot of this isn't really predictive per se, but no,
Troy B: no, no, I just think with some of the correlation of things that we've been, like I did a couple of, uh, I think some cool stuff, not that I had any intent on publish, uh, publishing some of the studies, but just more for more internal use to help some of the teams I was working with, we did some cool stuff with Moxie.
I see, I see a Knox box on your shelf there.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah, I got a Moxie, I got a Panoe, I've got the Knox
Troy B: device, so yeah. All the things. So, um, so we did some cool stuff on ice with, um, with actually a pretty good, uh, two groups. So one was a, [00:09:00] a U15 girls hockey team with Moxie on ice doing a 30 second, like, full out.
Skate. Oh, yeah. And we did, and then we did the same thing with, uh, their male counterparts, and we found some interesting, um, kind of, changes between, uh, one group versus, like, basically when, uh, Uh, female versus male, what we found was some interesting things there too. So, um, specifically on there, what we found was, um, much lower oxygen utilization on the female side than on the male side.
During this, except for one, which seemed to be an outlier, she actually just committed D1. So, kind of interesting there. But then, for the most part, her, her female counterparts was a very, like, Barely a dip in some of their, uh, in some of their SMO2, so just I've got a bunch of stuff like that because I played with all the things, so.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah, no, that sounds good. I'll do a short pause and then you're good for about 55 minutes. Is that right? Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I have a hard [00:10:00] stop at uh, 55 minutes from now, but we're good until then. Yeah, sounds good. Cool. Alright, I'll just do a short little pause. Hey man, how's it going? It's great, Mike, how you been?
Hey, very nice to see you again at ISSN. I see it looks like you got an ISSN shirt on there with bright colors, which is awesome.
Troy B: Right.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Nobody
Troy B: does tie -dye quite like Jose, so.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I thought it would be great to have you on the program today and just talk roughly about just some of the cool testing and just different results and stuff you got going on there.
Cause I think I had this discussion with. Well, I'll, I'll leave it vague, but it was a professional teams and people associated with them in Europe when I was over there recently. And my counter -argument to, and they generally agreed with me, was we don't really need to argue about a lot of this stuff anymore.
We can get specific testing on specific athletes like [00:11:00] cheaper and more accessible now than we've ever been able to. Um, which. I think there wasn't a necessarily a news flash to them, but I think with a lot of people, there's the, well, this is the way we've always done it. And they point to ex -athlete who's very successful.
And again, a lot of those methods could work. Um, but even stuff simple like, um, like hydration, you can use a Nick sensor, you can stick it on the athlete, you can get. live data from a simulation or a competition. Uh, we talked about Moxie, Panoe, I've got a Knox device. Like again, like some of these devices are in the thousands of dollars, but if you take like a Panoe device, which is a metabolic heart, it's still in the thousands of dollars.
But when you consider the metabolic hearts I used at the University of Minnesota were 40 to $50 ,000. Yes. You know, well below that. Um, So what are your thoughts about just testing in [00:12:00] general now compared to even, even five years ago?
Troy B: So gigantic difference. So I have spent like decades, especially in the hockey space, um, or like more of my, my space has been more hockey, um, for a long time.
And often when I'd get, um, when I get contracted out to some of these teams, I'd say, okay, cool. What have you done for off ice testing or on ice testing? And then what do you actually even do with that data? Yeah. And you, like, that was the big one. Like, why waste the time if you're just gonna, you know, just, just test, you know?
So just the difference between five years ago to now was even as, I'm sure you're well aware like when you're in university and you run like a metabolic assessment, it needed like three people, you needed, you know, 50, 60 ,000, sometimes $100 ,000 in tools just to make it happen. And like on, on your statement, now we can do that relatively with one person, maybe in an hour and a bit to [00:13:00] try to get something as what was really as hard to attain as a metabolic assessment.
Um, and just with. Going, rewinding even five years ago, just some of the stuff that I would use here to test for things like, um, like a, um, like there's lots that we'll do. So just something like a vert test, for example, we would use sensors, just like ground contact sensors, that kind of stuff. And, and yeah, it did the job because, you know, 30 years ago we would just have a ruler on the side of a wall and jump up.
Yeah, getting a vert tech was high tech. Yeah, that was the coolest thing ever. Oh yeah. Everyone gets still, everyone still gets kind of fired up over, over that, but now like even just to where we are now, where we have tools that like that, that I used, um, specifically things like a Plantega monitor, like I've got, uh, like the insole here, we would just pop in the athlete's shoe.
and it runs at 400 hertz so [00:14:00] it's going to get 400 samples a second with 30 different metrics you know so when it's going to measure like average speed you know their top speed uh stride length the asymmetries you name it like there's there's it's a lot um And I feel that sometimes, now that everything is really accessible, we've kind of, some people go too far the other way, and I found myself getting that as well, where we need to get like all the things, right?
So, give it all to me, you know, kind of thing. So, um, but now to be able to reel things in and relatively quick and non -evasive, where we can just pop it in someone's shoe, they don't even know it's there. Some of my basketball players actually. prefer those insoles than the ones that came with their shoes so we get tons of great information and especially on the practitioner side where it doesn't feel as clinical where you know sometimes it's like super formal like inside that like those settings and it's not really conducive to a lot of [00:15:00] like solo people when you're trying to conduct things with a team like to try to run through 20 people on a hockey team to try to get them tested like that that used to take a lot of And now I find myself with, you know, you know, six, seven of the Plantega monitors.
I run through a team in half an hour and I'm done the assessment. Outside of like strength assessments, like that kind of stuff. So, um, it's come so far so fast. And I think that's been such a Uh, a positive step for me to be able to provide much better information, uh, for teams. Um, but the most recent example was, uh, and one of the, the one that kind of hits home to me the most was with, uh, Chloe LaCasse.
She plays on the, uh, the women's, um, soccer team for here, Canada. And she also plays for Utah Royals, the professional on the pro side. So, in October last year, she scores a hat -trick in one game, and the very next [00:16:00] game, she blows her ACL. So, to go from being the absolute, like, best of the best, you know, she's one of the best players out there, and then the next minute, you just don't know if you're...
Yeah, there's a lot of uncertainty that, uh, that goes along with that. So, she's from my, like, my town, Sudbury, and typically, most of her therapy would had to have been done back with her pro or now on the national team, but because of the tools that we have now with Plantega force plates, like, pocket dynamics, you know, that kind of stuff, uh, we've been able to do her, uh, her recovery here at home, so she could spend time with her fiance.
She can be around her family while she's recovering. And, uh, I can provide some really good information, uh, back to the home, to back to their, uh, to their pro team where they know that they're getting like a really high level of care. So especially as a small town like ours, there's like a hundred thousand people here, middle of nowhere, literally Canada, um, to be able to have those conversations with [00:17:00] teams makes my life like so much better when it comes to the assessment side.
Yeah,
Dr Mike T Nelson: and you can show actual data on the progression. So it's not like, oh, trust me, she's doing great. And the other team's like, we don't know you from Adam. I don't know if we trust you, right? If it's a new person in the town. Again, I'm not saying you personally. No, no, of course not for sure. But you can show data now to be like, you don't have to trust me.
Like, just don't take my word for it. It's like, you know, the Russian phrase, like trust, but verify. Here's the actual output data. We did this test or this test or this isometric or. And you can see progression over time. And those are actual output tests that give you a status of, you know, where she's at.
So they can be like, Oh, okay, great. So it looks like everything is on track. Or, Hey, maybe it's not progressing as much as we shouldn't. Let's change this or let's change that, right? You know, versus, hey, trust me, and like, you know, four months go by and like, oh my god, what happened? This is a disaster. [00:18:00]
Troy B: Oh, for sure.
And especially in like that kind of case where someone's worth, you know, Like, I've worked with, you know, NHLers, I've worked with other, like, pro -athletes, national -level athletes. So, to be able to give them that feedback, like, level of comfort definitely kind of changes. Um, but to see things like her running, like, on a, uh, pressurized treadmill, Uh, to get to, to let the team know that, okay, it's not just her running and her doing her thing, but we can see maybe that asymmetry change at a certain pressure where we need to maybe pull back yet.
So if that leg is starting to compensate, like her, her non -affected limb is starting to compensate a lot to kind of get off the affected limb. then we can pull back a little bit before it's too late, um, so we can stay within that good range where those asymmetries start to, to kind of sculpt back to where they should be.
So, um, and the other side too with having things that No one really cares if they're wearing it doesn't really change anything [00:19:00] like the the monitor is doing like in -game analysis. So of course, like, like in basketball, like load monitoring with Kawhi Leonard back a couple of years, you know, that's no one even really heard the phrase that much until he started to really kind of like.
ramp that up. And what we did with the Sudbury five was some of the athletes that we would see that were that were most like some of the starters. We would have them wear the monitors and we could start to, I could communicate some of the information to the coach, to the medical staff, almost like as an in -between, like someone as a director of performance, like what my job really is as like the, the, between the coaches and the medical staff, I can provide both sides with really good information.
Like, Hey, just letting you know, you know, the, our Our big is really starting to have some growing asymmetries, so could we have maybe somebody take a look at him and that really did come up for us to go into the playoffs to see one of one of the players really started to get those. Asymmetries aren't the end of the world, but when they start to become bigger and [00:20:00] bigger, there's, we have to start to investigate things, right?
So I'm not, I'm not in that camp where, oh, everything has to be perfect, cause that's nonsense, but, um, Especially in a sport that's a little bit
Dr Mike T Nelson: more
Troy B: symmetric, like, basketball,
Dr Mike T Nelson: compared to tennis
Troy B: or
Dr Mike T Nelson: golf.
Troy B: For sure, I mean, you get, uh, you get a golfer, and if they're perfectly symmetrical, like, I don't really know how...
You're probably a crappy golfer. Yeah, honestly, they're probably me, to be honest. So, um, so we've seen, like, that, that... To be able to have that kind of information to really help the, um, the medical staff to say, Hey, I'm not sure what's going on because that's not my department. But what I see is some growing asymmetries with, you know, this player A.
Well, they go in and take a look to see how he's feeling because some players don't want to say anything, especially in our league. It's a developmental league. You play, you've got to be in there. You got to be in the game, right? To kind of get your worth. And it turns out that there was. Yeah. a bit of an injury that he really wasn't saying a lot about so to just to let him know that we're just that I'm there to help and he doesn't see [00:21:00] wearing the monitors as a detriment right so it was cool to see to be able to kind of add a bit more value on my end instead of just saying yeah coach like thumbs up everyone's good we can have some really good data to show okay well it looks like the players are slowing down a bit like some of like the the common guards We can see at some point some of the guards are getting a lot faster and then they start to kind of slow down a bit then we can start to see what their practice schedule is like and just come up with a better information package for the coach.
It's not like. Okay, coach, well, this is what you have to do. It's, well, no, here's the information for you. And you decide because you're the head coach. So he was able to be able to make some, some adjustments that I hope made a difference. And, um, to be able to help those players long term as well.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah, I think that's a, a key point that we can do a lot of.
This testing in the actual environment, the sport is being played, you know, where a lot of the older stuff was, you could do some pretty cool, like even take [00:22:00] metabolic hearts. I mean, yes, there's been kind of portable ones for a while. You can debate how useful they are now. They've definitely gotten way better over the years, but you go back many years, like the portable metabolic heart didn't exist, you know, so you had to do.
Like hockey players, do you do a treadmill? Do you do a bike? Like most people don't have a skating ramp they can do testing on that's trying to simulate a gait pattern for skating. You know, now where you have, you know, portable ones, you can stick a moxie sensor on them and it's relatively less intrusive.
And so now you can monitor them doing their actual sport and get actual data from a live um, competition or practice instead of trying to go well. The VO2 max on the treadmill is this, okay, that's helpful, but does that really transfer? If it doesn't, how much does it transfer and how useful is it?
Troy B: Yeah, well, and that was one thing that we felt with some, like in particular, some of the, the goaltenders that we're working with, where [00:23:00] some of them were just garbage runners.
Like, no, like that's just, they just weren't the best runners. You put them on ice. You're like, holy crap, that dude's amazing. And that's what we tried to try to find like a better way. To to try to assess that, right? So even with the portable units being on ice with the temperatures being so low, often they're too low for them to be to be really effective.
And sometimes it just. doesn't you're not going to get great data from that if it's too cold so yeah um that's what we moved into using the moxie monitor on on ice because we couldn't do those assessments because i i want to try to provide the best information i can and of course v2 max you know is going to be correlated to good abilities across across many sports so i what i wanted to do with the uh with the moxie monitor was just let's just see what's what because i've i haven't seen that abundance of data yet.
So we had a female and male team, both of the same age. Um, and what we found was something really, really, [00:24:00] I didn't, that I didn't think we were going to find, but the utilization, the off the SMO2 utilization on the female side was much lower than it was generally, like generally speaking on, on the male side, uh, with one major outlier on the female, uh, side, she actually just signed div one yesterday or the day before.
Oh, wow. Which is kind of, like, interesting. So, um, what does that mean? I don't know. We would have to dig around more. Um, but it was just interesting to be able to, to see what that looks like. And on the other side, to be able to show those players, like, maybe at what time they start. And the coaches, that was the big piece, was, to see at what time do they start to have a compensation pattern.
So, uh, we would see that much earlier using initial measurement units and, um, and a moxie than a coach could ever, ever see. We actually did this test on a skating treadmill, um, where we had a moxie and, uh, an IMU on the, on the athlete's skate. [00:25:00] And the treadmill was only going eight miles an hour. And I could see I could see a bit of a change and because coaches are always, you know, like I'm my eyes is great, which is super valid.
You know, we get some coaches with crazy eyes like they see stuff that I just blows me away, but to be able to show them data that they couldn't possibly see. So to see that change in whether it was ground contact time or whatever. So that kind of led us to doing. bit of a test on ice with a 20 meter acceleration.
It's a typical, uh, hockey test, right? When it comes to skating. So what we really wanted to find was like, was there a correlation between, um, what makes someone a good accelerator? and what doesn't because there's so many there's so many opinions on what makes someone like a good skater and for the life of me it drives me bananas when a coach comes in and it's always hey you have to work on his or his or her first uh first three steps The amount of [00:26:00] time I've heard that just, it's, it's almost weekly.
So what we, what I wanted to do with a colleague of mine, we wanted to see like what makes someone a really good skater and before are a really good accelerator, I should say. So before we couldn't do that at all, we could just time them and like hope for the best and just try to like analyze video, like that kind of stuff.
So. What we did see was, um, the drive index on, on the athletes was, um, tightly correlated to their 20 meter time. So that's basically the, you take ground contact time divided by air time, and you would get, um, Um, you would get that drive index. So, then, people say, okay, well, now what? Well, that tells us that if someone spends too much time on the ice, um, it's, their time's gonna change.
Or if they're really short in the air, well, that's also gonna change. So, there has to be division of both. So, [00:27:00] that kinda led us, cause so many coaches up here, they, they have a lot of opinions, but not really backed by, By much. So to kind of have something tangible to show them, like, no, like what you're saying is only half, right?
This is like the, the real deal of what we, what we, what we found anyway. Um, cause we can only speak of course, for what we find, um, in our environment, but to be able to show a coach that, and for them to go like, huh, maybe there's something to this science stuff, because I feel what my experience has been with coaches is that especially in hockey terms, um, There's really stuck in the dark ages when it comes to their beliefs.
Well, you know, coach how you were coached kind of stuff. Yeah. So, and it's, but there's just so much great, there's great universities up here doing great work. Some down there, of course, as well. So, um, and us privately doing our own thing. So, trying to get to the bottom of it. And to try to provide something better, more long [00:28:00] -term, um, was, uh, was kind of the, the goal.
So, uh, to be able to test hundreds of hockey players, like we've been able to kind of get to that level now, because it's been a, it's been a few years. And to try to create a bit of a, a database to show players, to show coaches, um, Just what it really means to on the performance side so players that are accelerating that have this drive index are the ones that seem to do the best so this is what you should work on like to be able to provide a competent plan to to coaches to to to help them on ice and
Dr Mike T Nelson: I often wonder how much of this is.
It has to be also be translated because I also think of if the coach is saying, Hey, this is, this player is, you know, one, two or three steps short all the time, you know, usually you're thinking, okay, acceleration, right? And the coach may even say, Oh, he's a poor accelerator. And I'm thinking, okay, like exactly what you did, like let's test the acceleration.
But if they're [00:29:00] a fast accelerator and they're still getting this feedback from the coach. My brain goes to, maybe they're just really bad at sequencing. Like they're physically fast, but their ability to predict what's going to happen is really crappy. Right? So the coach is really trying to tell you that this player is not where he or she is supposed to be when the shit's going down right in their brain.
They're assuming that it's a physical thing that they're just slow, where it definitely, you know, a hundred percent could be that there's some athletes are faster and slower, and that makes a huge difference. But if you test them and you find that, okay, his or her speed is the same as these other athletes, but I'm still getting the same feedback from the coach, then it allows you to go, Oh, okay, well, what else is it?
Maybe it's a sequencing thing. Maybe it's a prediction thing. Maybe they have a, an eye thing that's going on or vestibular thing, or who knows what, it could be something else that they've got four concussions. So, you know, like, but it allows you then to troubleshoot and figure out what is actually going on instead of just [00:30:00] making the assumption that.
They're just slow and spending all their time on this acceleration work and everything else that might be beneficial for someone who is slow. But again, that may not be the root of what their actual problem was.
Troy B: No, for sure. And I think that, like, to, to that point, it's to be able to show them, okay, well, this is their acceleration time, and this is, you know, so just number one, like, whether using a hand timer or whatever, of course, we're going to use, like, laser timers, but, um, we'll use, you know, gates to get correct times, and I think that every team should have one, because they're not, like, super, super expensive.
Yeah, they're not so bad now. No, but to, but even if you didn't, if you just had a stopwatch to see how someone really is, so then you can have your, your buckets, as I like to call them, um, to see if someone is, if they're slow, it's, it's binary. Are they slower than the, the mean, or are they slower than the average?
Yes or no? Like it's, it's pretty, It's simple. And if they aren't, then, then where should we start to, to dig from there? You know, [00:31:00] um, as, uh, my dad used to say, it's your IQ can make up for a lot. So if, so if you're, I was the world's okayest cornerback, but I just, I would see things a bit quicker. But my legs just weren't fast enough to catch up to the rest of them, you know.
So to um, to be able to provide that kind of information to, to start digging in probably the right areas instead of just, I'm sure you've probably run into this too, where you talk with someone you, they just have spent years and years and years working on the problem where that necessary, not necessarily was really the problem when they could have been digging in a much more fruitful direction.
So, um, to. A lot of times what the reason what I like to have some like we have all the tools that we could possibly want here, um, we can use them and then find out what direction we should go in, you know, so, um, okay, well, this isn't working. [00:32:00] So after a month, okay, cool. Well, that didn't work. We got to move this direction.
Like just what we do with, um, many of the, the athletes that will have come in through the summer when it comes to the, uh, like their, their, uh, off season, uh, off season conditioning. Like we only have so much time and. It's kind of funny to hear people on social talk about oh, you have to do like this and this and whatever it's dude You don't train anybody like that's a hundred percent
Dr Mike T Nelson: a lot of those people you ask him like, okay Who have you trained like just?
And they're like, doesn't have to be a pro. Yeah, well, I've read a lot of stuff.
Troy B: I read this thing on T Nation. Yeah,
Dr Mike T Nelson: yeah, yeah.
Troy B: So great resource just, you know, but, um, but some of us have, like, I've spent almost 30 years, like, digging, trying to find the right direction, you know, and I'm like, I am so not holier than thou.
What's great about being kind of in my position is I get to be friends with the people that are the best at what they do and that's to me like that's the greatest [00:33:00] position to be in. So to to be able to dig in those directions and find out that maybe what we're doing or what they're doing isn't necessarily the direction they should be going in.
So like acceleration, okay well no dude like you say you're 10 meter fly in, you're running a 101. Bro, you're good, like, let's go work on something else, you know? So, um, like, we just had a Div 1 kid go to school, and he wasn't running a 101 here, but I think he had some extra, extra pizzazz when he went down there.
And, and he hit a 101, so he's like, coach, I hit a 101. I'm like, okay, good, so let's just maintain, and let's go work on other qualities, you know? So, um, And often, from my experience anyways, what we, when we start digging around in any of the sandboxes, a lot of times it's just quantifying what we kind of already know, but we can put a number to, to that, right, where someone is slow.
Well, okay, what does that mean, though? Instead of just, you know, back in the day, well, you're slow, so we got to go get faster. But, like, [00:34:00] what does, does, does that mean ground contact time? Does that mean, like, force into the ground? Like, what does that really mean? Very
Dr Mike T Nelson: directionally specific. Right? Because a lot of these are sports.
These are not just track where you're running linear, you know, so they may be saying you're slow, but they actually mean you can't change direction, you know, which is right. I get it. It's actually a different thing. But to people who are watching someone, they may just associate and be like, Oh, that player is slow.
It's like, well, they have a linear fast, but they just can't change directions very good. So that's where they get beat every time.
Troy B: And so I had, and I've had this kind of conversation with, uh, with other people where even in the NFL, like the people that have scored except for, you know, Xavier Worthy, um, except for him, most of the people that are the fastest forties don't really produce that much in the NFL, you know?
And in general, there's
Dr Mike T Nelson: a few, there's a few freaks who are outliers for sure. Not the
Troy B: average though. No, and that, which is, I mean, yeah, you need speed, and like, [00:35:00] I'm, I think speed is the most important. I'm wearing a bracelet that literally says speed over everything. So, like, I'm a speed, I love, I think that speed really matters, but what I think...
matters a lot is, you know, your breaking ability and of course change of direction. Um, like to your point that of being able to measure, uh, like that change of direction? Well, we can do that now where we couldn't possibly do that, especially when it mattered most, like in a game. So to be able to see how many times somebody is accelerating or decelerating in a game, um, we can create more competent practice plans or help the coach create those practice plans as well.
Like we've had basketball players like those some of those guys are big like they're like 250 pounds they're like damn near seven feet tall like they're unit of a human so accelerating decelerating a ton like one was 154 accelerations and 148 decelerations in a game like that tick tick tick you know like that kind of stuff so um, um, that bringing [00:36:00] that information to the Coach to say, Hey, well, this is kind of what we can.
This is how many times so -and -so is accelerating and decelerating. Um, maybe get a couple of the guys to wear some of the monitors in practice, just to see what that kind of looks like. So if you're doing like far too little, we know that's not really beneficial. It just, especially at the, at the pro -level, and maybe it's like way way too much like where we can kind of find that happy medium for the players so they can develop.
So. www .Flydreamers .com To be able to monitor things in game is like the I feel on my end of things. Like it's great to have the clinical side of things where you have like the um, the metabolic carts, you have the force plates and all the good stuff, you know, velocity bar, speed readers. So you can get all the information you want, but what matters most is when they're playing the game.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah, because at the end of the day, it's You're building athletes, not just monsters in the gym. And again, that doesn't mean that gym training is not effective. It just means that what is the, the outcome you're trying to [00:37:00] get. And like the speed example, like the example I use, and granted I'm a huge Minnesota Vikings fan, Uh, is Justin Jefferson.
Like, is he fast? Yes, is he probably the fastest person in the NFL? No, probably not even top 10 maybe, but you could argue he's probably one of the best receivers in the NFL, or easily in the top 3 to 5. But if you watch his ability to cognitively know where to be, to run a route, to stop and change direction, to be in the right place at the right time, like all those things are ridiculously high.
And I would argue that yes, you still have to be fast, but it's a lot of those other things that add up to make the person really good at their position and to play really well as an athlete in the actual game.
Troy B: For sure. Like I, I don't think there's probably a bigger insult to an athlete than telling them they're a really good practice player.
Yeah. Right. So to go in there in the gym, like we have some guys that are, you know, There, [00:38:00] I bring one guy into train with some of the pros that we have, like he's a monster, he'll deadlift 600 pounds, he rows like a 112 for a 500 meter, like he's, he produces a wicked amount of power on the bike, like he's just, genetic freak.
Um, and he, I've also worked with him for, for a long, long time, but is, does he have this, the ability to play pro? Like, no, like he's, he's doing just fine. He's working in a great job, so don't, don't feel bad for him, but it's just, it's just to take what he could do. To, to have the, the other abilities that like the, almost like the intangibles that makes a pro a pro, of course we can kind of, I guess, like quantify some of them, but to take some of those qualities that really make a pro a pro isn't always.
Especially in a game like hockey, someone's like physical traits, it's, you know, their IQ, how fast they see they can, or [00:39:00] how much they can slow down and speed up the game. Like a lot of those kinds of variables where we had some of the best players in the world that are under 200 pounds, um, that are dominating the game.
When you get some of these guys that are, you know, six, six, we have another guy in the NHL, it's going to be damn near seven feet. So it's, and it's crazy how fast they are too, but. Um, but to think of just like, I think it's great that we have all of us. I'm a big sports fan. Obviously, I've been doing this like my my whole life.
But, um, to think of what those little pieces that we really can't measure where it's almost like the goal for us opening this place in a location that we did like up here in northern Ontario was to give everyone access to a sports science lab. Thank you so much for having me. where there was no possibility of that before.
That was kind of, that was the goal. So now there's no excuses when it comes to, like, this side of things. So now, like, what are you going [00:40:00] to do with the other side? Is kind of like, that's, that was kind of the, the goal. So, um, all of that sort of came from, you know, But way back in 1986 and me watching, uh, Rocky IV when they were building, um, Yeah, yeah.
Building Yvonne Drago, the red machine in the lab, you know, me being this little kid, going like, yo, you could do that with science? That's amazing. You know, so. Um, to then to take all that nerdiness and then throw it into trying to see what we could do with all of this side, but then knowing full well it's those little pieces that those athletes that they have to have almost like they have to have inherently, um, to, to really operate at a really, really high level guys like Jefferson, for example, like that's a great example.
Um, my team's Miami, unfortunately, but, you know, that's, uh... Oh,
Dr Mike T Nelson: okay.
Troy B: It's okay.
Dr Mike T Nelson: You guys have Tyreek Hill, is he still there, or is he... Yeah, he's still there. He was playing for Miami for a while, right? I think he's still there. Yeah. So, [00:41:00] it's, uh... He was one of the ones who was legitimately fast and a good receiver.
Troy B: And that's such a... so often we'll see, like... We'll often see like because like they can go so fast, they kind of lose abilities on the other side. I just feel that like in hockey as well, like some of the fastest people I've ever seen with except for, um, McDavid, uh, can operate at that kind of speed and still operate, you know, wait with their stick you know so to see that happen at that kind of rate of speed that what he's doing is like outworldly it's crazy where most people that are crazy fast just don't have like the hands connect the brain connected to the hands kind of thing so on the sad field often maybe on the football side as well where great you can run a 40 that's like just blazing but what when do you really know how to make that that that cod to to read what the Linebacker or the defensive back is really doing.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah, and even I think the game is [00:42:00] becoming at least football and I think hockey is going this direction and I don't know enough about baseball to say yay or nay but It feels like the complexity is getting more and more every year. Like from the amount of plays that are run, the type of plays, the variety of against the teams you play, the different schemes that are used.
And I think you are actually seeing players who are much more, I guess for lack of a better word, cognitive, who study a lot more film, who are better at prediction, and obviously have to be very physically capable. Like I think that's becoming sort of like the new, New level where I think even culture wise, at least in the NFL, maybe 15, 10 years ago, 15.
Yeah. If you spend that much time studying it, it was almost kind of looked down upon you're like the weirdo, like, you know, what are you doing? It's just more of a physical thing where, and now again, use examples from the Vikings, like, you know, Andrew Van Ginkle and people who just spend tons of time watching film.
And then you watch them play and you can [00:43:00] see it register that subconsciously they've seen that same pattern again. And they get like half a step on the football, which makes a massive difference, you know, so you're, to me, you're seeing that complexity actually going up over time. It's not going down.
Troy B: Oh, for sure.
And I was so, uh, this is my first year with a basketball team as well. Like, uh, especially like I've worked with basketball too.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Like,
Troy B: I've worked with a team, like, off -season in the, on the, on the off -season stuff, but not, like, actually, like, hired by the team. It was just more, like, the team in the, in the summertime kind of stuff.
So, to work, like, to be a director of performance for a team, and be involved with all that kind of stuff, that was a wild experience. And being kind of, like, ignorant, in a way, to not really knowing the complexity of just the amount of plays that really get... Like set up in the entirety of the game of, I've always been a basketball fan and yeah, you see them like on the, on the, on the clipboards and that kind of stuff when you're, when you're watching it, but when you're there on the bench and you see like players interacting [00:44:00] and you see them really thinking about the game, like to me, that was, that was amazing.
It's such a like mind -blowing experience for me, like just because when I watch someone move, I don't really watch the sport, I watch like, like what that means, how they're moving, like that kind of stuff, it's just kind of, I can't turn it off, you know, my wife hates it, we'll go to a, we'll go to a hockey, football, whatever game, uh, whatever, and it's just, it's always on, so to see that side of like, just how the level that the players are really thinking of, uh, what the other players are doing.
Like I've seen it in football where the plays are there, but in basketball, it was just kind of like too much to the outside, like too much of a fan and not much of a on the, on the staff side, but it is mind blowing at just how much they really talk and communicate with our team anyways, um, to, to see just what they're going to be doing even after the coach presents the play.
So it was pretty cool.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. And I think sports that are a little bit more continuous like hockey and basketball, I think it's harder To see what's going [00:45:00] on because everything just sort of blends into the next thing because of the nature of the sport, or with at least American football, you have a definite stop and you have a definite start and you get a static picture before stuff happens.
So I think it's just a little bit easier to see and sports like that as a, as an outsider. Oh,
Troy B: for sure. Like in hockey, there's always a play, but it never goes to like, I can't say never. It's probably a 90. some percent you have your set play for your face off and then it just kind of chaos breaks out so you know what you want to do you know how you want to enter in the zone but you just you don't know if that's really that rarely ever happens to plan right so um yeah And
Dr Mike T Nelson: then a follow -up question on the moxie testing.
Do you think, were you able to measure like any strength tests? And do you think that a lower moxie score would have been better? So for listeners, [00:46:00] like you're measuring what's called SMO2. So you're just looking at this little device that sticks on to the muscle. And it's shooting a little, basically near infrared, like a little red light into the muscle.
Trying to determine like how much oxygen the muscle is using, maybe blood flow, some other parameters. And so the theory I was wondering is if the muscle is stronger, so it's contracting harder and you're running plays, you would expect the SMO2 to go down then because the muscle is working harder and maybe it's constricting more of the blood flow.
So you might expect, in air quotes, a worse or a lower SMO2 in that area might be more indicative of acute performance. So
Troy B: what we did, because I followed that up with a, uh, 30 second, um, fatigue index on the, uh, on a biker. So the boys, some of the boys are producing over a thousand watts. And then, um, to, to take a look to see what [00:47:00] the girls are producing.
Some of it was, was half of that. So that was my interpretation was just the, like the wattage that they're producing. Um, I was hoping to be able to try to figure out a way to get the wattage of narrow skating, but just that, that just turned to a mess. So, yeah, I don't know how you would do that. It'd be cool.
I'm sure someone has figured it out and, you know, hit me up, hit me up if you did, but, um, But to to see like on the fatigue index amount of wattage that they did produce seemingly was, I can't say really tightly correlated to performance, but just more for the oxygen utilization seemed to be there. So, uh, just because we could use the lab here with the bikers that we have, um, and we'll use perf pro as our, uh, as our pull in for, um, for data from, from the bikes.
So that was kind of cool to see. And then it was super interesting as well as that girl was talking about where she just committed to D1 where she had some of the highest [00:48:00] wattage on the on the girl's side as well. So does it make sense that if they're producing more wattage than they're utilizing more oxygen, that's what it looked like on the bike.
And that was what we wanted to see was like. What matters like that's I think with the whole term of the whole of sports science in and a team sport as track what you think matters. what really matters you know so um things like we found like in a 10 meter sprint i'm just looking because i know some of the guys are will be coming in here anytime but um we found that a couple of things were pretty tightly co -related to sprint performance as in a via Nm acceleration.
Um, I wanted to see what it looked like on both ends. So both on like relative peak braking power and then also the propulsive power. And we can see that they were like fairly tightly correlated. I need a bigger population to really, um, some more, some more digging around, but it made for interesting information though.
The [00:49:00] reason I bring it up is just like to to see what really really matters and I think that sometimes we We try to like boil it down like we try to like boil it down to that just that one thing Just that one thing for us to focus on and that's not possible. You're only so simple Right, that's And I think we, I did a, I, early on in my career that I did a really piss poor job, honestly, of, because I was trying to find just that one thing, you know, well, strength really matters.
Well, yeah, it matters sometimes, and it matters a lot, but it matters more than sometimes than it does in others. Well, power really matters. Well, yeah, that probably matters more often than strength, but it doesn't always matter. Like, it just, there's just too many variables. And if you're real weak. Good luck trying to get a high power output.
Well, exactly. So then what do we look at? So do we look at things like, um, like force development or rate of force development? Well, somebody might be able to have, you know, a good rate of force development, but are they're weak as shit. It doesn't really matter.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. Yeah, it's like my buddy [00:50:00] Cal Dietz has said, he's like, yeah, rate of force development matters.
Like max strength matters, but all those only matter up to a point. He's like, if your athletes are weak as kittens, it, that stuff doesn't matter. They just need to get stronger, period. But once they're stronger, you know, he had an athlete, I think that was early on. I think he was saying they took his max, I think back squat from 385 to like 435.
And he actually got slower. Yeah. He's like, Oh crap. But he then later on had another athlete, I think those squatting 365, but was doing it so fast and so violently that he was afraid the bar was going to jump off his back. And he was able to do that with a short period of rest and repeat it again for some ungodly amount of, of sets without his speed of the lift going down.
You know, he's like, that's, that's a much better athlete. Like is his absolute number as high. No, but he can do a high enough [00:51:00] output that it's good enough and then he can do it at speed and then he can repeat that output for just a huge amount of time and time and time again. Yeah,
Troy B: and I think, like, over the term, over, like, the development of the athlete, of course, things matter more over, like, differently in different phases of time as well.
You know, so, um, like, just this year, we had a great, uh, U15, uh, hockey team that, uh, that we worked with, and the coaches were, I've worked with one of the coaches before on another team, and, um, I, I said, I really want to run a bit of an experiment this year. Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, the coaches were like, well, what do you mean?
Cause they were like, we need these guys, like, this is an important year, like all that kind of good stuff. Right. So I said, I want to do next to no conditioning off ice, and I only want to focus on strength and power. That is all. And they just kind of with a blank, terrified stare. Yeah, okay, let's try it.
So we took some kids who were not very good movers, [00:52:00] like the purse. So one of the kids was able to only backspot like 105 pounds for five reps. Like I wouldn't go to a one rep Mac with kids that were 14. So we're staying to like a five rep max kind of thing. Um, And we got them by the end of the year.
Like the average was two 55 for the team. So nice, so to me, to see that team be able to get a lot stronger, more powerful, get them to understand some of the training concepts. Like doing like isometrics like doing overcoming isometrics like that kind of stuff to better be able to get them to understand what's going to be important over time, um, then as they grow as an athlete, we have one one kid here who's.
Just under 150 pounds, just yesterday, he was, uh, uh, trap bar deadlifting, uh, 440, I think it was. Oh, damn. Nice. And like, he was, he was moving it too, so, um, so talking to him, saying, okay, buddy, like, I think we're good on this, you're like, almost, [00:53:00] you're like 3x -ing your body weight when it comes to, like, your ability to pull.
Um, let's maybe maintain that, but let's kind of work on other qualities too. So, um, to be able to have the tools like, like a velocity bar speed reader, to be able to like quantify some of that stuff, to show them just what kind of matters more ish now, if that makes sense. So things like strength, yeah, strength really matters, but then if you're three X in your body weight or two and a half X in your body weight, like.
Great, but could we maybe get more valuable use out of our time by training things like power qualities or maybe some other things that are maybe more, um, skill based as, as well. So it's not just about what happens here, but like, okay, we can, we've hit a pretty good spot. I don't think that we're really going to develop a lot more past what we're going to do with the time that we have so we can maintain those qualities.
And then we can move into other areas because we're, we're not, Just trying to build by weightlifters and powerlifters, we're trying to build [00:54:00] athletes so and that was my mistake. I think early on, like when I first started to work with people was everyone had to be strong as hell and really that's all.
That's it. We can get strength checks a lot of boxes, especially for high school kids. But then when does it when? When does the rate of return start to go or go down when we're when we need to focus so much time on that development? Yeah,
Dr Mike T Nelson: and I think that's the cool part about looking back to technology.
Like, we've got newer technology that's becoming, you know, cheaper. Like, I used, uh, the University of Minnesota, Caldeet's has a 1080 machine that's on, uh, but not the Sprint one, but the one that's on the Smith machine. And you can do programmed eccentric. You can do overload. It'll measure output. Amazing device.
Uh, and this is probably, I don't know, three years ago it was down there. It's $50 ,000 though. It's like, oh, wow, that'd be cool to have. But, and now fast forward, you know, you've got like, Beyond Power has like the [00:55:00] Vulture 1 device, which is a portable unit. And you can do up to 200 pounds, so I can do rows with 100 pounds concentric, and then I can immediately add 50 pounds more eccentric on it.
I can do isokinetic testing, I can do isometric testing, and again, it's not a cheap device, but it's cheaper than a $50 ,000 device. And so we're getting to the point where we've got more options now, both from the monitoring side. And also we're seeing some very cool and, you know, novel training devices too that are utilizing technology to, you know, that one's a cable driven, but you've got EM units now and you've got all sorts of stuff on the market, which is great.
Troy B: Yeah, and I kind of made my own poor man's 1080 by taking, by taking an exergenie. So just like, I don't know, a couple hundred bucks, a few hundred bucks maybe. And then I took a modified crane scale, and just put it between the camber, like the uh, the carabiner I should say. Slipped it to [00:56:00] the, the unit, and then had the uh, the athlete pull on that, so we could see the kind of like, uh, the weight that they're pulling, like true weight and it'll, it'll track it too, like using like a g strength, like that's what I use there.
Okay. So to be able to use a g strength, a few hundred bucks, the extra genie is a few hundred bucks. I'm not saying it's as effective as a 10 80. I wish I could, you know, but as a, the super poor man's version to be able to have that was like, gave me great data. I just have my laser timers and to get their, uh, their sprint momentum and gave me great information.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. I. I won't say the name of the coach who told me this. I don't want to get anyone in trouble because they might be sponsored by 1080, but they were saying is like the poor man's version. If you want to go like, you know, old school caveman, just have some sort of timing area and then just have the athlete drag chains, adjust the length and weight of the chain and how much is dragging.
And by measuring the peak drop [00:57:00] off time between their max time without chains and with chains, You can approximate like how much a load you're getting.
Troy B: It's like,
Dr Mike T Nelson: Oh,
Troy B: that's pretty cool. And even with that, you could get, uh, by using like a G strength as well. Like you can get, you know, just by, by using that, I love the chain idea.
You can really see like just how much they're pulling by taking that same amount of chain across the same surface and seeing exactly. Yeah, you can just minus it with the device, yep. Yeah, so even just as a quick, uh, quick go -to, so that's a, that's a great idea though.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah, cool. Um, so as we wrap up, is there any, like, newer technology or stuff that you're like, Oh man, this thing is so cool, I love.
X, Y, Z that you've, you've kind of been playing around with that you really like.
Troy B: So, the Platiga monitors have been, I know I've kind of like sung their praises, but to have something so like simple on the athlete side, like I'm monitoring people that are even, not even in the same city. [00:58:00] So I have, uh, that's crazy.
So I can get. Information like how fast are they really sprinting instead of just getting yeah coach. Here's my tracker I get okay. You moved at 19 .8 miles an hour. Cool Um, why are you going slower? What's going on like just to be able to have those really in -depth conversations? So and
Dr Mike T Nelson: you get the diagnostics to see what changed too So not only do you get an output what you need to know are they getting better or worse, but you get sort of the sub -diagnostics of what has possibly changed.
Troy B: Absolutely and its like, it's 400 times a second right, so we can see, you know, steps, ground contact time, and then insert whatever you can think of here and then I can take that data, throw it into, into studio to see, like to pull any other information that that I want. So, um, I. I don't think there's been a product that I've used that I can take the lab and throw it into, uh, the, the, the field of play.
Dr Mike T Nelson: And what is the approximate cost on those just for people who are listening? So it's about a thousand bucks. Okay. [00:59:00] But,
Troy B: um, I feel that especially for those athletes and coaches that are really looking to make a difference, I, I don't think there's a better investment than, um, than that. And they're amazing to deal with like they're.
Um, they've done some great work. The NBA has invested a ton of, uh, a ton of resources to them to develop the WNBA as well. Oh, nice. So, a lot of really great story too of the come up for them. So, good people. Uh, Quinn's the CEO. He's a, uh, great, great guy. Um, and just the team that he has behind him has been, like, quite, uh, quite impressive.
So. Um, the super quick, the most impressive one, I think, more recently, that has been the use of some just AI technology when it comes to, um, just monitoring an athlete using a camera and just the information we get from that now, I think, I think that's going to be the, the wild side of things the next couple of years.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah, and I think just the ability of AI to parse huge amounts of [01:00:00] data, you know, back to the NFL, like the NFL for quite a while has had. Yeah. Most teams have multiple data experts, you know, and all they've done is just analyze and mine data and like you said, present it to the coach and the staff. Where I think now the ability to take old data sets, new data sets, look for patterns that may not have, you know, been there and leverage AI to do that in a desktop computer in a matter of seconds now is going to be pretty wild.
Troy B: Yeah, that's, that was the, without, without that kind of heavy lifting being done, honestly, I'd spend all my time doing that, so to be able to house me. Because we're old enough to
Dr Mike T Nelson: have tried to do that old school, and it is so hard, it is. The amount of open columns and crap you've got on spreadsheets and arguing about what stats method to use and even what to look at because you're, as the data sets get bigger, it just becomes almost virtually impossible.
Troy B: Like just with in one basketball game, we would get 4 .5 million rows [01:01:00] of data. So good luck. Yeah,
Dr Mike T Nelson: yeah, that's awesome. That's super cool. Where can people find out more about you? I know you have some stuff online and the url and everything else there Yeah,
Troy B: for for most, uh, I'd be on Instagram. That's where I do most of my, my social stuff, just Troy, I, at Troy Beauregard.
Um, and, uh, that's where, honestly, we're, and on LinkedIn, a little same, same thing, but mostly I'm on, I'm on Instagram.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Cool. Awesome. And give out your location again, if anyone happens to be in your area there and wants to work with you in the physical spot.
Troy B: Yeah, I'm in Sudbury, Ontario. We're um, about four hours north of Toronto for anyone listening, but um, that's yeah, we're uh, we're here and happy to help.
Cool.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for all that. I really appreciate it. That was great. Thank you.
Troy B: Thanks, Mike. Yeah, you as well, bud.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Thank you so much for listening to the podcast. Huge thanks to Troy for coming on and spilling the beans [01:02:00] on all the really cool stuff that he's doing there with testing all of athletes and just everything he has going on. So I always love talking to practitioners on the side of Applied knowledge, so obviously learning more is gonna be beneficial, but at the end of the day, how you apply it is what makes a huge difference.
So. Make sure to check out all of Troy's stuff there and if you are in the area where he's at up near Canada make sure to check him out. In person responses. Check out our friends over at Element. Today they've been drinking the Raspberry one, which has been great. If you're looking for a device to do changes of concentric and eccentrics and isometric and even isokinetic testing will actually even display power at the same time.
Check out my friends over at Beyond Power with the VUL Ultra one device. I've had it now for as of this recording, I [01:03:00] think it's about seven weeks, and I really love it. It's something I used literally almost every day. I think I have used it every day. I've gone to the gym here to train in some capacity or another.
Lately I've been playing with actually doing bicep curls, which I don't do a lot of, but for grip stuff is gonna be beneficial. And I've been playing around with using heavy chains on that, which is kind of a different movement, which actually felt pretty good. Because you can then change the strength curves on different movements depending upon what you're doing.
Obviously each component is gonna have a point where you're mechanically stronger or weaker. And what's fun about the device is you can change it so that you can see more overloads in different parts of the strength curve. And if you want to get uber geeky, you can even customize your own strength curves within the device which is pretty wild.
And then instead of loading more chains on or setting up bands, which I still do and I still like the [01:04:00] use of those, I just hit one button and it'll automatically change everything. And if you want to get super geeky, you can even run a heavy eccentric with chains at the same point. So if I'm doing, again, my seated row.
And I really want to emphasize that back position. I can actually run a heavy eccentric and a high amount of chains so that the load is high at that end position for an isometric. And then I still have a heavy eccentric component. So check that out below. It is an affiliate link, so I assume I do make some money from that.
In terms of testing and more on the metabolic side. Check out our friends Panoi. If you aren't interested in that device tell him, Dr. Mike t Nelsons sent you, or just drop me an email. More than happy to put you in touch. If you're looking to do full metabolic heart testing you can gas cal the device as to make it as accurate as possible.
That'll allow you to measure both [01:05:00] carbohydrate and fat metabolism. So check them out. I've been using it for quite a while. Really enjoy it. And lastly, if you're looking for recovery, check out our Friends over at Kill Switch. This is a new supplement I've been playing around with and I actually really, really like it for sleep.
A lot of stuff for sleep I haven't noticed makes a pretty big difference in, I would say on my Aura scores. I'm usually about, at least 20% better when I use it. And my wife really loved it. So she was pestering me the other day of when we're gonna get more in. So check them out below. Again, that is also an affiliate link, but it's something that I found for sleep.
Really does seem to help the vast majority of people, so check them out below also. So thank you so much for listening to the podcast. We really appreciate it. We got a ton more episodes coming up here very soon. Everything from one of the guys who was a creator of Diners Dive [01:06:00] Ins and drives, or, ah.
So thank you so much for checking out the podcast. We've got tons of great episodes coming up very soon, so stay tuned for those. Thank you so much for listening. We can do us a favor by sending this to someone who may enjoy the podcast, hitting the old subscribe button, especially on YouTube. That's very helpful.
Download all the wonderful things to help with the algorithm. Thank you so much. We'll talk to all of you next week.
Speaker: Well, that's talent. An opera singer who tap dances and sings cowboy songs. I wonder if there's anything she isn't good at. Yes. Choosing what shoe to be on.
Speaker 3: This podcast is for informational purposes only. The podcast is not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. You should not use the information on the podcast for diagnosing or treating a health problem or disease, or prescribing any medication [01:07:00] or other treatment.
Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider before taking any medication. Or nutritional supplement, and with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition, never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it. Because of something you have heard on this or any other podcast, reliance on the podcast is solely at your own risk.
Information provided on the podcast does not create a doctor patient relationship between you and any of the health professionals affiliated with our podcast. Information and statements regarding dietary supplements are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Opinions of guests are their own, and this podcast does not endorse or accept responsibility for statements made by guests.
This podcast does not make any representations or warranties about guest qualifications or credibility. Individuals on this podcast may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services referred to therein. If you think you have a medical problem, consult a licensed physician.