In this episode of the Flex Diet Podcast, I sit down with my good friend Dr. John Rusin to dig into his new book, Pain-Free Performance: Move Better, Train Smarter, and Build an Unbreakable Body. We talk all things movement, strength, and longevity—how to actually perform at a high level without wrecking yourself in the process. John drops some serious wisdom from decades of training and coaching, and we get into the real science behind balancing load, recovery, and pain management so you can keep crushing it for the long haul. If you want to know how to train hard, move well, and build a body that lasts, you’ll definitely want to tune in.
In this episode of the Flex Diet Podcast, I sit down with my good friend Dr. John Rusin to dig into his new book, Pain-Free Performance: Move Better, Train Smarter, and Build an Unbreakable Body. We talk all things movement, strength, and longevity—how to actually perform at a high level without wrecking yourself in the process.
John drops some serious wisdom from decades of training and coaching, and we get into the real science behind balancing load, recovery, and pain management so you can keep crushing it for the long haul.
If you want to know how to train hard, move well, and build a body that lasts, you’ll definitely want to tune in.
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Speaker: [00:00:00] Welcome back to the Flex Diet Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Mike T. Nelson. On this podcast, we talk about all things too. Increase performance, add muscle, improved body composition, and do all of it without destroying your health within a flexible framework. Today on the podcast, we've got Dr. John Russin, and we're talking all about his brand new book, which is out now called Pain-Free Performance.
Move better, train smarter, and build an unbreakable body. So big thanks to John for being on the podcast and talking all about how performance can be achieved, but you don't necessarily have to do it at the cost of breaking your body. So I've known John for quite a while and it was always great to chat with him.
We go over a bunch of the different principles in the book. And even just some of the principles of, I'd say, kind [00:01:00] of basic exercise physiology that tend to get lost in the process. You can get his book now and it's on Amazon. We'll put a link to all of it below. He did send a copy to me, which is great.
I did have a chance to peruse it a little bit before we left here for South Padre Texas, and it is a monster very well laid out. All the sections are great. Extremely comprehensive and I think you will enjoy it. Sponsor of the podcast. If you want more information from myself, make sure to hop on to the Fitness Insider Newsletter.
We'll put a link down below, or you can go to mike to nelson.com. Go to newsletter, and you can get daily free updates directly to your inbox from myself. And then also, if you're looking for creative ways to do. I'd say different aspects of performance. Check out my friends over at Beyond Power with the Vol Ultra of one.
We're down here in South [00:02:00] Padre, Texas as of this recording, and I brought the device down here with a little platform and I've been able to do some basic exercises here just in their little rental place especially for some grip stuff and some other easy accessory stuff. What I really like about the VUL Ultra, and not only is it portable in terms of having a kind of.
Quote cable stack you can bring with you is I really like that you can change the concentric and eccentric component. So for example, down here I've been doing some testing of also isometrics with the rolling thunder handle for grip stuff. And then I can do a slightly heavier ecentric overload for it also.
It's a really cool device. Check it out. It is an affiliate link, so I do make a few bucks if you do pick it up. Through my link. But I really enjoy it and I've been using it like literally every time. I've been training in the gym or even down here. So it's actually portable. Put it in the back of the SUV and was able to bring it down [00:03:00] here.
So those are the sponsors. And without further ado, check out the podcast here. My buddy John Russin.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Welcome to the podcast. How are you today?
Dr John Rusin: I'm doing good. It's been a while since I think we've podcasted.
I was going back in my memories on my iPhone and I think it's like eight years, I want to say, since we were sitting down at my house doing a podcast. Yeah. Very much the same way.
Dr Mike T Nelson: I, yeah, probably was. I think it was in your gym. That's cool. You still in the cheese land there
Dr John Rusin: still in Madison?
Different house. Don't have the Epic gym anymore, but, oh yeah. Some better stuff. I'm a neighbor of Jim Snyder's now, so even better.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Oh, I don't know if that's better.
So you go over and borrow his gym then?
Dr John Rusin: I only see him a couple times a year. He'll ride his jet ski over, we'll shoot the shit about basketball strength and conditioning, and then I'll see him in a couple months and we do that on [00:04:00] repeat. So yeah it's life of a coach.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. Yeah. I, he's one of those characters where he'll like pop up every once in a while and I'll a few text messages and then he'll disappear for like three years and I won't hear from him.
Dr John Rusin: That's exactly right. Yeah.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Cool. So I know you've got a new book out. Like why. For people who are listening who haven't published anything. One, it's a monster pain in the ass, but why go through all the effort of doing it?
Dr John Rusin: Wow. That's a loaded question because it's not something that I ever like wanted to do.
I'm like, no, I'm gonna be an author someday. I want to be a New York Times number one bestseller. That absolutely wasn't it. But I think over the last eight years of running the Pain-Free Performance specialist certifications, there was a need to go into a different medium for the education because we're doing these two day in-person certification courses, almost 200 every single year, and we kept on getting the same questions from our coaches, and then our coaches would get the same questions from their clients of, where do I [00:05:00] learn?
Everything I need to know about pain-free performance. 'cause this stuff's awesome, but I wanna be able to refer back to it. I want to have the references and I also just want to be able to hold it in my hands to be able to look at exercise variations, look at the systems, and simply know that I can go to a one stop shop to get everything that I need.
So all of this has always been in my mind. Like I always want to serve our coaches and our attendees as best as I possibly can. But in 2022, I got approached by a publishing house and I got approached by a co-author who I was a huge fan of Glen Cordoza, who is an absolute legend in the field. He sold tens of millions of copies of fitness and health books over the last 15 years.
And he said, Hey John, I want to write this book with you. I've taken the course. It's fire. This is exactly how I train. Like let's bring it to life. And naively I was like, you know what? Cool, let's do it. And this is Thanksgiving day of 2022, and it took us almost three [00:06:00] years of full-time work to be able to like push this out, have it into our hands for the first time, and actually bring it to market and have people being able to experience the whole new pain-free performance in a written form medium.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Oh, that's awesome. Two questions about the writing of the book and stuff. Since a lot of people here, I'm sure you get questions about publishing and everything else and the fitness and you've published tons and tons of articles, what did you. Underestimate and overestimate about writing a book.
Dr John Rusin: I think I underestimated the amount of time and energy that would go into being able to bring an education system and all the articles and the resources and the podcast and the TV shows and that I've done.
And I was like, oh, it's easy. I've already done it all. I've already done it all. Let's just format this thing into the resource. And very quickly I realized that I am a perfectionist. I always want to be able to elevate above what I've done previously, and that turned into, hey, we are gonna go in and evolve [00:07:00] the system.
We're gonna be going in and optimizing the messaging and the way in which we're teaching for simplicity and actionability. And it is totally different. Presenting on stage for 16 hours, then it is having somebody sit down autonomously and read your content and read this book. So I think that Glen and I thought, oh, this is gonna be a little bit easier than we thought.
We went in when the first thing that we did was we probably laid down a couple hundred hours of expert interview. Glenn had been through the pain-free performance specialist certification course before. In person. We send them to a couple more, and then we got four different iterations of pain-free performance that was on video.
And we had him study those and then all of a sudden he was like swimming in transcripts. He was like, holy shit, there is so much. And every time we get on another interview, I'd give 'em another article. I'd be referencing Teen Nation and bodybuilding.com and throwing 'em over onto dr john russin.com. And all of a sudden it was very intimidating.
About eight, nine months in we're [00:08:00] like. I think we need to go back at this at a totally different way. And at that point it turned into, hey, we know what the structure is. The six phase dynamic warmup sequence is gonna be there. The six foundational movement patterns are gonna be there. My lifelong performance style hybrid training, those programs are gonna be there.
But in order to get my voice and in order to get the most up to date aspect of what I'm teaching, we gotta go back in and we're gonna do expert interview and we're gonna write this one section at a time, little by little. And that's what we spent the next 18 months doing.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah, I think I had the same issue when I was helping Cal Dietz write the Phasic two boat.
Very familiar with the system. I'm like, oh yeah. Like it can't be that difficult. And that was freaking nine and a half years. It took nine years to get the. The thing done. And I'm similar to you. Like, Kyle's like, oh, but then I have this idea and I have this idea. And you're like, ah, shit.
Like this all changed. 'cause I did the same thing. I'm [00:09:00] like, great, I have all the videos, I get all the transcripts, I got all the articles. Like it won't be that hard. And in the end, I don't think I use more than like 40 words out of any of them. Right. It was like a good foundation, a good start. But then you realize trying to get your message across in a written form is different than live or even video or places where you have interaction.
You don't
Dr John Rusin: exactly
Dr Mike T Nelson: know how exactly it's gonna come across. And I'm sure you've had this too, where you explain something and then you're like oh crap. They won't know that unless they know this, and they won't know that unless they know this. And so you end up walking yourself back and then to try to put it into a whole system that actually makes sense is it's a lot more effort than I think people realize.
But the good part is it becomes much more usable at the end then too.
Dr John Rusin: For sure, and any great coach like kale and yourself you're always tinkering. The principles remain the same on what you're teaching. Giving the example of pain-free performance or phasic training. The [00:10:00] principles are there.
The system's there. But we love to train, we love to coach and we love to be able to find new solutions out in front of us with our athletes and our clients. And it's almost like, in a, you'll do a transcript and then three months later you're like, oh, I just cracked the code to this specific technique.
And I felt like. I wanted to make sure that if I did have something good, that everyone got access to it. I'm sure that's why it took you guys nine years, because I can only imagine the conversations between two wizz kids like yourselves and going in and optimizing and optimizing and adding more cool shit that works better and better.
And that's why it takes so long. Because I think when you're dealing with career coaches and people who really just give a shit about the people who are reading or training on their systems, that it becomes more than just publishing the book. It becomes how do we give back the most to the people that are gonna read and utilize it.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. Because it, even now there are people who can do well monetarily wise for a book, but I would say the vast [00:11:00] majority of it, even by the amount of time and effort you put into it, is. Not the thing I would recommend people to do if they're just solely worried about money. But I think, like you said, there's a benefit that it's, I dunno, maybe I'm old school because I still buy frigging CDs and I buy books and I buy like physical things that you can have for a long period of time and to, like I've told people who are new coaches, and I'm sure you've told them this too if you could do anything, it is just buy someone's book on their system and just read it and get really good at it.
Because a lot of, and I get it, like I was, very poor starting out and everything else too. But I remember buying, super training and all sorts of other books. That's Kiki's book and it's always amazing to me that you can buy a book like your whole system. Literally in a book for not that much money.
When you realize how much time and effort and sweat and reps and mistakes and all that stuff that goes into it, like you can [00:12:00] literally buy somebody a system now for what comes out to be incredibly cheap.
Dr John Rusin: For sure. And I, and we're doing it more than just to get the royalty check on. Yeah. Books sold.
But I think for me specifically, like I was approached at the right time in my life, unfortunately I had started pain-free performance in 2018 between 2018 and 2020 up until COVID, I was really running it independently doing 40 plus two day certification courses all across the world in a single year.
And I was burned out. There was multiple times where I'd come back from a back to back internationally, and I would just go to the hospital. That's how bad I was feeling. And in 2022 I was in that burnout phase. I was having some severe GI issues. I actually contracted COVID and I had. Full body poison ivy all simultaneously.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Oh yeah, that sounds horrible.
Dr John Rusin: [00:13:00] It was it was tough. So I was already running on red and I ended up having the poison ivy, which doesn't seem like a huge thing, but it was all over, like it was 70% of my body and I had a course in Chicago and me being me, I want to go out there, I wanna present, I wanna perform, I wanna interact and I want to network with all of our students that are out there spending their time, money, and energy with the pain-free performance system.
And I go in and it was the toughest weekend of my life. I barely got by between five minute potty breaks. I was laying on the ground and I drove myself to the hospital that day and I knew something was not gonna bounce back. And I ended up in surgery about six weeks later. And it was one of those things that, so many things hitting you all at once.
And for me, I pride myself in health and longevity training. So for me to be struggling with these issues, it was really an eyeopener. And I didn't know if I was gonna be able to go in. And continue the education the way that we had been in the past. Of course, now today, I have a huge team of world-class expert instructors that travel, but at that [00:14:00] time it was the unknown.
So, you're thinking really grimly, you're outta surgery, you're deactivated for three, four weeks, unable to do anything. I was unable to even walk down my street. That was my exercise for three weeks and you're like, Hey, if I don't make it or if I can't do this any longer, I wanna make sure that this system that has helped so many people, certified so many coaches is made a really big dent in the fitness and health industries I want this to live on.
And I was like, Glenn called me right at that right time right at the right time where I was like, not wanting to write a book. I'm already running multiple businesses and doing all this stuff and I'm burned out and I'm recovering and I'm in rehab. But that was the driver. That was the driver.
I wanted to make sure that, people could futuristically learn from this system. That is essentially my life's work, and it's the compounding of all of my life's experiences in this field and out in one 600 page resource.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. And I think people underestimate how taxing [00:15:00] travel and presentations are.
Yeah. I love doing it, but COVID was a very interesting break where you went from, doing it a lot like previous, what, three years? I looked at my schedule before COVID, so for three and a half years, the longest I was home was three weeks in a row. Wow. Which was great. It was all self-induced or something I wanted to do was great.
But then you realize going to bed and waking up in the same place each day, like being able to exercise when you want, having your nutrition more controlled. And there was a lot of negatives with COVID of course, but. It was a kind of an interesting break where I'm like, oh, I don't know if I want to travel so much after this, but I had no comparison until that point.
Dr John Rusin: Yeah.
Dr Mike T Nelson: And you forget because people listening are probably like, oh, you fitness people, how come you can't take care of yourself? But it's very easy to get in this thing of like, okay, I want to be there. I want to be at my best. I want to perform. And you do that for so long, it's almost like overreaching with even training.
Like you don't realize how beat down you are until you take time off [00:16:00] away. Yeah. And then you have that comparison, you're like. Oh crap. That was a lot more stressful than I thought.
Dr John Rusin: Right. For my specific personality type, I run on red in terms of chasing those highs. And the highest that I can ever get is being in front of an audience that invested to be listening to me speak and teach them the systems.
Totally. And that high turns into, hey, Saturday morning at 5:00 AM before I teach at eight, I'm gonna go in and have a kick ass session with a number of people right in the city because I love networking. And then I'm gonna take that with a sweat on my face right into the seminar at eight and I'm gonna roll it through two hours later.
Then it was scheduled to, because I want to overdeliver, and then I'm gonna do exactly that same thing on a Sunday morning. And then I am going to be so elated that I'm gonna be in the brink of tears when I say, Hey everyone, thank you so much for spending your weekend with me. And then you go from the highest of highs there.
And I'm a high energy presenter, so I'm always like bouncing and teaching and, almost [00:17:00] yelling. And you go from that to getting on a plane and going back and it's almost this high to high, to a low of a low. And I think the nervous system goes from this peak potentiation down into nothingness in a matter of like two to three hours.
And that's something that, especially with our instructors that are out traveling regularly, two, three times per month now for pain-free performance. It's one thing knowing the curriculum as an expert, it's another thing practicing what you preach with you and all of your clients.
It's a whole nother thing of expertise to be able to be a professional presenter in a long form space, to be able to protect your energies and be able to mitigate that burnout, because I've been there more than anyone's been there, and it's not a great place to be. And then you can't. Continue to serve everyone who you're there to serve.
So it's one of the central skills that we try to teach our master instructors today, a pain-free performance is that you want to conserve your energy. Maybe don't go for that one RM deadlift on Saturday morning before teaching. Like that's a 1 0 1. [00:18:00]
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. That's also what I figured out is I had to modify my training, especially if I was teaching for like four days in a row in Sweden or something like that.
I would just do light aerobic stuff. Some old school, just bro, 20, 30 minute stuff. And that would be it. Yeah. Like I wouldn't do anything heavy. I wouldn't push anything that hard. And then if I was teaching like Thursday through Sunday, like Monday would be an off day. I wouldn't fly back to at least Tuesday or Wednesday.
Do whatever I needed to get caught up on sleep in usually booked like a float shank for like 90 minutes. Not talk to a single human for like two days.
Dr John Rusin: That's the way to do it. Yeah, I think where I ran into problems a number of years ago is that I would get done presenting, I'd go from that high to that low and then I'd walk in and, my son has basketball and I need to go out there and I need to coach the team and I need to work the rest of my businesses.
I need to be a family man. I need to do all of my normal daily obligations on top of what I had just done over the weekend. And I think that placed me into the shoes of many of the [00:19:00] clients that I work with today.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Oh, totally. I
Dr John Rusin: transitioned from, 15 years ago working almost 100% with high performance athletes to today, 95% of the people that I work with.
Are over the age of 35. They're professionals in their lives, not on the field or court, and they're looking for health and longevity as a key marker to look, feel, and function. Great. And I was having to make that same transition as many of my clients are making today. And I think that when you can experience it yourself at such an extreme marker as I did, you have you have a better connection point to where somebody is currently at the actual real life daily obligations that they do have between their family life and their professional life.
And then how does training, how does nutrition, how does recovery. Fit into this to have a net positive with all the work that they're doing. And that's, I think in 2022 and starting the book and then continuing to manage the education businesses and all of my coaching that was a big turning point to, hey I have been moving [00:20:00] in the health and longevity direction for many years now, but this is the direction that I personally need and this is the one that I've seen most dividends pay off with my own health and wellness, that I want to make sure that I can educate people a little bit more deeply on those topics.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah I agree. A lot of it you. Learn by coaching people and a lot of it is hard earned self-experience for better and for worse at times too.
Dr John Rusin: For sure. There's something to be said about like, Hey the chick with the fattest ass, or the guy with the biggest pex is gonna be the best coach for you because they have what you want.
If aesthetics is your goal, or the guy that benches 500. Whatever that goal set may be. But many times there is an element of practice what you preach model, especially when it comes to health and longevity. It's very hard today for the average person coming in for personal training or coaching at, 45 years old, has three kids at home and a wife and is traveling two to three times per month for business.
To come in and [00:21:00] trust a 21-year-old trainer who's doing 20 ones for their bicep right before they go in and jump into that personal training session that day. Because the life experience and the wisdom of navigating different elements and different seasons of life just isn't quite there yet. So I've always been a big believer that if you are a coach.
What you have in terms of your expertise and your knowledge and your systems that you are gonna be presenting to your clients, it needs to be so good that you can't afford to not do it yourself. And you are always gonna be the n equals one, and you are always gonna be your first client. And that is something to be proud of.
But I think many times people, they dabble too much into the hobby of health, fitness, and training, and they forget about the professionalism of the field that is backed on principles.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. And I try to look at, for coaches, like not so much the end result, which is obviously important, but who have you coached?
At what level? What were they before? What were they after? [00:22:00] What did they learn? And then more from a action standpoint, like, are you doing the things you say you're doing right because everyone's gonna have different individual goals and that type of thing. Of
Dr John Rusin: course
Dr Mike T Nelson: the fitness field is this weird thing where.
It's almost this unwritten assumption that everyone must train for max hypertrophy and body cop. Like, shocker. There's like other performance things like people may want to do outside of that, and those things aren't bad at all. And you do have a lot of the sort of the genetic freaks that, that look well, but you see some of their training, you're going, what the hell?
And I think those people fast realize that, oh, I can't do the exact same thing I did with myself, with this, client who may not line up, may not have the same genetics, may not have the same lifestyle. And that's where the skill and the art and the science come in of, okay, what do I do? How do I get them the result?
Because they're paying me and they've got different circumstances and different things going on than what I have going on.
Dr John Rusin: I think throughout my career, [00:23:00] the big equalizer that I've seen between all different avatar types of clients and athletes that I've worked with is the healthiest are the ones that are gonna thrive in terms of being able to chase down any type of goal set.
Definitely being in pain or having systemic health issues is going to be the thing that holds you back from. Having max muscular hypertrophy or maximizing your strength output or endurance or any other marker of success in terms of goal set. And, people ask me all the time, they're like, how have you guys done 20,000 certified coaches in person that pain-free performance in less than a decade?
'cause it's a shit ton. And I'm like, Hey, we never biased against anybody. We always believed that we could have a strength and conditioning coach like Jim come in and he'd appreciate it the same as a yoga instructor from town. And they'd appreciate it as a personal trainer that's been in the field for two or three years.
And we could have a physician that comes in who's looking at trying to specialize into exercise prescription for health and wellness. And everyone can still [00:24:00] appreciate the principles behind what we're doing in terms of the systems base of what we're teaching. Not a modality or a method, but a system that speaks to more of a well-rounded approach to training, to health wellness, and.
I do believe that there is this big wave coming in our fitness industry and in our health industry towards Health First Fitness. Health First Fitness is essentially like, let's ensure that you're healthy human being first. You can move like a functioning human being, but also your blood test doesn't look like you're gonna die the next day.
And then from there, we know that we have the foundation that we can build upon to be able to go into general preparedness and then specialized preparedness in terms of a goal set. Many times today, like just with the inundation of so many sexy hobbies out there on social media, we have people skipping the health.
We have people skipping general physical preparedness, and they go right to a specialty and they end up burned out, broken down, and hurt. And then they have a dysfunctional [00:25:00] relationship with how exercise or fitness even fits into their lifestyle long term.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. I think of it as kinda like the three tiers of fitness coaching, like the sort of the bottom or the tier three of.
Just writing a program, having somebody count your reps, tell you what exercise to do. Yes. All that stuff. Incredibly important and super useful. But that is by far the absolute minimum. Like tier two is like, hey, maybe you talk about nutrition, maybe you actually shocker, try to match your nutrition to your training.
You do something like that. You try to account for a little bit of lifestyle and I think where everything is headed, exactly what you were saying is the tier one of, okay, I've got movement down. If someone's in pain with, not assuming they, they're not post physical therapy or something like that.
If it's a skillset I can deal with, we can modify their exercise, we can find ways to work around it. We can talk about nutrition, we can do some basic testing. We can talk about lifestyle sleep. If they're not certified or able to look at blood work, they don't know what they're doing. They have someone who can look at it or at least give them some basic interpretation of stuff to make sure [00:26:00] that they actually are healthy.
They do have a solid foundation and I think that. Is gonna be fast becoming sort of the new minimum for what trainers are gonna be responsible for pro or con. There's benefits to that, there's negatives to it, but I think everything is definitely moving more in that direction.
Dr John Rusin: I think so too. So much so that we have an entire section in the pain-free performance book that is dedicated towards linchpin blueprints, which is essentially like, Hey, this hurts, or This movement pattern hurts.
Here's your optimization plan to get out of pain and back into performance. And then we have recovery based cool downs, phasic, cool downs. But before we talk about any of the programming or exercise selection, there's this big graphic that says The Triad of Recovery. And it is training monitoring your exercise selection, your volumes, your frequencies, the basics that we've all forgotten about.
And then we have our nutrition oh, nutrition actually matters. Yeah. It matters. A job for recovery. And then the big one is gonna be lifestyle. Your sleep. Your stress, [00:27:00] your daily positions that Triad is so forgotten about because we all tend to perseverate on the sexiest of things, which is the shiny object syndrome, which is most times exercise selection or a specific goal-oriented program that is maybe a mismatch for that client's reality.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. Not everybody needs to do lengthened partials of a bicep curl as like their main mover for their exercise. It's like, how about a strict bicep curl If you wanna work biceps that's worked for years. Chin up basic patterns. Heck even throw some rows in there. Like, that stuff is just, the basics are always gonna work, but they're just not.
That's sexy,
Dr John Rusin: so. So if somebody has a PhD like you, like, how much do you see that we have forgotten about just the general foundations of exercise, science, biomechanics, physiology in today in 20 20 12 versus, when you were in school? Like how much do you think we've forgotten in [00:28:00] our industry?
Dr Mike T Nelson: I would say actually a, sadly a lot, but it's also probably my perceived viewpoint if I only looked at social media.
So if I only looked at social media, I'd be like, oh my God, this industry is a floating trashman fire. This is a disaster. But the flip side is, as there's a lot of really good coaches that are doing really good programming, they're still interested in education, are still interested in getting better or doing it as a legitimate like full-time profession.
And then they just don't post a lot on social media or the stuff they do post isn't as sexy as this new whizzbang thing and you need to stick the red light up your ass or whatever you need to do. Right.
Dr John Rusin: I see the same thing and it's, it is, the frame of social media is gonna be the biggest driver of information today, sure. We'd be naive to say that it isn't. And when we tend to look at end users and where they're getting their information from, we're seeing personal trainers and new coaches in the field. You ask [00:29:00] them on a resume, Hey, who are your influences in the industry? And then they list Instagram accounts.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah, that's crazy.
Dr John Rusin: They don't list the certifications that they've done. They don't list the continuing education courses. They don't list the mentors that they've coached under for six months in a residency. They list the most popular person on YouTube with their 15 second clips, which is sensationalized content to be able to essentially sell something or get an advertisement click.
And there's a big difference between social media and education today. I think that was another big driver of like a fucking book. There's no denying when you have a mainstream published textbook with everything that you know in it that, Hey, this is not 15 second clips. This is deep diving for mastery and application.
And it is, I do believe a differentiator. I don't think a whole lot of people are reading today, but what they are doing is wanting to have something physical and wanting to have a resource that they can [00:30:00] page through and get ideas from. It's almost like Instagram in the real world, in your hands, like that's the way we try to make with some of the QRS and different features that we have inside the Pain-Free performance book, but similar to you every day.
I'm like. Man, I want to consume social media because there are great experts like yourself that I want to continue to learn from or at least be able to deep dive in and have a resource to be able to click through to something better than just an Instagram post. But at the same point, I see that I get discouraged sometimes when I see a vast majority of like those high click counts or the high follower counts, or my son coming home and telling me about the next YouTube fitness guy is the one that are actually making the dents and making it harder for real coaches like you and myself to be able to just essentially help people achieve their goals and actually maximize their future with fitness being a part of it.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah, and I think books and even online courses, if they're a little bit more lengthy in person, definitely. I think those are all [00:31:00] actually really good filters, for lack of a better word, to find the people who are. Still trying to be real professionals. And that's one thing I do like about going to live events and seeing people like yourself do books and old school type stuff, that there's still a lot of people out there who want the information, who are interested or willing to put in the time and similar to you, like if someone's at a seminar and they ask me a question, I'm like, yeah, I'll talk to 'em forever.
If I get a horrible question off a DM off of Instagram and I can't find anything about this person I try to get back to 'em, but I might not, because I know that if they bought a book, they paid for a se, they showed up in person. Like they put a lot of skin in the game. And that tells me that they're serious about it.
So I feel like helping them, I know that they're gonna be able to apply that information. So I think having a book is also a good way to take sections to apply those sections over time. And then also it is just for the people who are a little bit more serious and then price isn't [00:32:00] really as much of a barrier either.
Dr John Rusin: For sure. I was poised with this question a year and a half ago, and it was some big wig business guy who was coming in to meet with us at pain-free performance. And he asked a very interesting question. He said, John, why aren't you going after the 96% of people who aren't strength training in America today?
Why aren't you going at the 90% of people that aren't exercising? There's a huge market there. Why are you going after the people that are already in the gym and maybe just not doing the right things in order to optimize their health or their performance? And it was very clear to me at that point in time that there's different layers of opportunity and I think that we all have a certain, we all have a certain duty to be able to give our information into people that can take action on it. And would I love to be able to help the 96% of people that aren't strength training today? Yes. But that's not gonna be happening overnight. It's probably not even gonna be happening in the next decade.
If we could tick that up to, five, six, [00:33:00] 7% of the population regularly, strength training, that'd be a huge lifetime achievement. But it doesn't really move the needle. For me specifically, it's those people that you see when you're traveling. You go into a commercial gym and they're there.
They're there and they're ready to work and they don't know what to do. Or they're doing the opposite thing of what they need to do to stay healthy or actually gain results. And I think that the opportunity point for that specific population. That is decided that, hey, I need to make fitness and training a priority for me, and I'm gonna come here and I'm gonna do this to equip those people with the tools.
I think that just vocationally, that is the number one thing that I tend to focus on with my coaching and then also with my education systems, because those people have already shown that they are there to be able to be helped. So I think that in terms of, behavioral modification scales.
They've already jumped up a couple flights in terms of being able to be applicable to some of this information. But I [00:34:00] do think that long term there is more opportunity out there to be able to impact like the deeper populations. I think something like a book can do that. When you sit down at a Barnes and Noble and you go to the tiny little health and fitness section compared to everything else, you can grab a book and maybe somebody's walking through there and they see something that catches their eye that they wouldn't have found on Google and they wouldn't have found on social media.
It's a new means to be able to bring it to a more mass population, and I think that with those people that aren't necessarily maybe training, maybe they're not training consistently, maybe they're not strength training quite yet, they at least now have every single tool to follow along. And then as they're following along, they can learn a little bit more about the methods and the modalities that make the system effective.
But. That is a big draw. Up until this point in my career, I've been very hyper-focused on the people that are already there training and we're trying to optimize their training now. I think the [00:35:00] book opens up a whole new opportunity point to get people moving, give them the confidence and also the education to do it properly from the get go so they don't end up as another statistic that is hurt from training in the first six weeks, or that burned out in the first two workouts and just doesn't want to return.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah, and I think that goes to, you can write a book like yourself that's very technical, but yet in a usable, laid out format that's useful, targeted to the people who are already doing stuff because what do they need? They probably just need better information. Like the mass market, you could argue, is more of a, almost a psychology experiment of, okay, how do we get people to take some action?
How do we,
Dr John Rusin: yes.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Whether you use the trans theoretical model or whatever, model use of change. How do we progress them to the next level because they're basically in the basement already.
Dr John Rusin: It's that, and then some. But I do believe, like, so when I say textbook, the publishers are like, don't say textbook.
It's a book. Yeah. Because textbook [00:36:00] means that, oh, people aren't gonna be able to utilize it and it's not for the average person. This was 1000% written for the enthusiasts because over the years of pain-free performance, we've seen a blend between the professional and the enthusiasts. And many enthusiasts turn into professionals, vice versa.
People that leave the personal training or coaching profession, they'll train for the rest of their lives as enthusiasts. So I think these two populations are actually blending together, but when we try to make it applicable and we try to make it real, I think one of the things that pain-free performance, our live certification courses have always done very well is be able to humanize.
Every single piece of content that we teach and we ice break and we tell stories and it's real, and it's my experience and it's my life. And this is where the stuff came from. And we did that same thing in every intro chapter and every intro section in the book. So I'll be telling these stories of like aha moments all throughout my career JL Holdsworth a friend of ours, I [00:37:00] have this story that I'm hugging him at the spot athletics in Columbus, Ohio after being an absolute weak lean next to him doing a deadlift session.
And he goes, John you're bracing. You teach bracing, but it's not right. It's not right. It's not right. Looking at me like, what the fuck? And all of a sudden he is like, you want see something? And he makes me hug him from behind. And I'm like, okay. And then, like JL has that huge torso on him just like made of meat.
And he goes, he and he like braces. And it breaks my grip and I'm like. Oh my God. What just happened? It was like an explosion that happened across his torso, and he goes. That's how you lift a thousand pounds and then just like walks away and like grabs a drink between sets. And I was like, holy shit.
But like different stories like that I think like breaks down the barrier to entry for people to be like, I'm not Dr. John Russin know it all. Just listen to me. I'm like, Hey, I'm a learner just like everyone else. I've had my own path and I've learned from so many different [00:38:00] awesome people throughout like 19 years of my career to date and paying homage back to some of these people.
And then these stories, I think it breaks it down where things just click and it makes it be able to be tangible for somebody reading a book that is gonna have some technical information in it as well, but it lines them up for being like, oh, that's why that's important. And I think that I can line up this next section in order to do what I think John wants me to do.
But that's a lot different than a lot of the other books that have been published in this space because when Victory Belt looked at it initially we had the first couple chapters and they're like. This is different. And Glen was writing it. It's like, yo, this thing's fucking fire. And I was like, no, this is the way that we teach the course.
So I think the way that we teach the course is the way that the book should be written. And I felt really strongly about that. And looking at it now, in a lot of the advanced reviews that are currently in circulation, people are like, holy shit. Like you can actually read this almost like, it's like a novel or something at different times.
And that was that was the highest form of compliment [00:39:00] because there's nothing worse than a book that is dry and mundane. We've both spent way too much time at the university to know that, man, that stuff doesn't stick. You're gonna know it for a dissertation. You're gonna know it for your test out, and you're never gonna really master it ever again because it was so fucking boring.
But making things come alive, especially for that enthusiast in that coaching market, it was just so important to me because I think that was another big reason for the success of pain-free performance in general.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. And I think making it relatable is helpful and also somewhat entertaining. Like as much as I love my research friends who have some very good stuff in their newsletters,
Dr John Rusin: yeah,
Dr Mike T Nelson: holy crap.
Is a lot of it really boring. Even to me, I sit and read PubMed for fun, yeah. So it's a different, also skillset to try to write with information that's solid, that's useful, that has stories. It is entertaining. And I think especially being from more from an academic background too, and doing [00:40:00] advanced studies you get all that creativity, like just beat the crap outta you.
And then once you get done, you realize, oh. Obviously if I'm writing something for formal publication, that's different. But for the vast majority of people who want to read stuff, like they're gonna read stuff that they find at least possible entertaining, has stories and also has good information, I don't think you can.
Do a book to more of the fitness enthusiast, more mainstream audience now that, that doesn't have those components in it. 'cause there's no one's gonna get past page two.
Dr John Rusin: That's how I got my start though. And I think that the feeling that I got like 2013 is when I published my first article on Tation.
I didn't even have a website or a social media platform at the time, but I got that first article up on T Nation and I wrote it just like I taught it and I coached it and people were like, holy shit. Like, oh my God, like this is good. It's entertaining. It's got some tongue in cheek in it. The information actually works when I go and test it out.
And I was like, oh, I'm onto something here. Because when I was [00:41:00] writing those articles, I was overworking in China and I had nobody speaking English at Chinese Olympic Village where I was working and nobody was available for me to talk because of the time difference. I think it was like 12 or 13 hours.
So I'm like, I guess I'm just gonna write these articles while I'm over here. And it just like caught fire. But I love the element of being able to teach something that works. One, that's the most important thing, but then also bring some personality to it. Bring some entertainment to it and have people having fun as they're reading a 5,000 word article.
Like, I miss those days so much. I miss looking at your articles on T Nation and looking at the guys back in like the early two thousands. Oh yeah. Writing this stuff like fire, it was a great time to be involved with that type of publication because they allowed you to be you and that was liberating for me because I always coach with a lot of intensity.
I always have fun in the gym. My athletes are, my number one when I work with them. And that environment is always fun [00:42:00] and it's entertaining and there's a lot of tongue in cheek happening. And I always thought like, oh, if I'm gonna be successful, it has to look like my doctoral dissertation in an article.
And like, no, it wasn't.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Nobody's gonna read that. No
offense.
Dr John Rusin: Yeah, nobody's gonna read it. And just going through and being able to have somebody telling you like, oh, this is good. And then catching fire with that. I think over like a six year period with them I wrote almost 300 articles that they published.
Ah, that's a lot. Like it was a wild streak. But man, that I think that was one of the key drivers of wanting to make the book. It's not quite as hardcore. Yeah. Pain-free performance book as what those articles were back then. But I think that there is something to that needing to speak to that same voice and making it fun.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. And maybe you're similar to me, like I think after you've been writing for so long, like for me, yes. You want to get good information across and you get to the point where that becomes a little bit more easy. But the part I feel like I'll never truly master is trying to get [00:43:00] it across by trying to be entertaining, trying to have stories, like trying to make sure it all flows together.
Like to me, I feel like that art of doing that is just something. I'll be doing for the next many decades and probably still feel like I'm not that good at it.
Dr John Rusin: This is gonna, this is gonna blow your mind. Because I wrote all those articles on specifically on T Nation, like in a similar voice.
It's my voice. People are like, how long does it take you to write this, like 5,000 word article? And I said, usually about 45 minutes to an hour. And they're like, what? Oh,
Dr Mike T Nelson: that's fast.
Dr John Rusin: What the fuck? And it would be something that it's like you're sitting on, and I would write it in the back of my brain.
So I would write my ideas. I'd have the catch lines, I'd have the different exercises that I wanted to feature, and I would go out and use. With my clients in the gym and we'd be talking about it and all of a sudden it's like you have it done, writing it in the back of your eyeballs, and then by the time you go and sit down, it's already all there.
This is not anything that I would recommend for anyone else to do, but I think that I was just [00:44:00] sitting on so many of those things, 'cause I was a unknown. Nobody knows who the heck I was back then, that I just had a lot of things that I was doing that I wanted to share and I was just like sitting on a stockpile of a lot of information.
Just knowing it so well that you can just spit it out and then actually doing the thing every single day with your clients so you can spit it out in such a way and use some of the content that's coming through to make it more applicable and more relatable. That was the origins to a lot of that stuff.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. That's great. What would you say are some of the top principles for someone who wants to train but not induce a lot of pain? Because we know like pain's probably the biggest thing that, once people are in the motivated stage, they're going to the gym, they're doing the things. I think you'd probably agree that, pain or discomfort in a negative way is probably the biggest thing that's holding them up.
Dr John Rusin: It is. And through our research over the years, it is going to be the number one thing that keeps people away from being consistent or consistently ga gaining in terms of their goal sets. But [00:45:00] number one is just move like a human. Just develop a complete human movement system of what we were designed to do and for us at pain-free performance.
That's the six foundational movement patterns. Squat, hinge, lunge. Push, pull and carry squats, bilateral hinges, bilateral lunges, a single leg asymmetrical, lower body directed movement. Pushing and pulling can happen at a myriad of different angles in terms of overhead to horizontal, all the way down into the vertical in the opposite direction.
And then carry is essentially just our locomotion of our body. Of course, we can do loaded caries, which is awesome, but we can also locomote our body in any way possible. We can crawl, we can jog, we can run, we can do airdyne bikes, anything that reciprocates the arms and the legs moving on that pillar complex.
But many times when I bring in clients or I do audits of people's programs that are having pain points or having plateaus, I see that multiple of these movement patterns are deactivated right away. And these are people that know what they're [00:46:00] doing, but sometimes they're not hinging. Sometimes they have no single leg in their training.
Oh, they're only training the push and not the pull. A you have no carry, you have no cardio, you have no conditioning, you have no capacity to actually have work being done. And these are the things that we start our audit with. But as sup, stupid simple as that sounds, that gets people going in the right direction because that is a complete movement system of essentially everything that somebody should be able to do through their youth development all the way up through active aging.
And this is something that age is not a bias for. I do believe that everyone from my son at 10 years old, who plays baseball, basketball, and judo all the way up to my oldest client who is 84 years old, who still wants to golf and be able to ride his bike, they still have that complete human movement system predicated on those six.
Dr Mike T Nelson: That's awesome. Is there any. Ratios or balance that you would apply to it. So one thing I did years ago and I just ran into it more [00:47:00] out of necessity, was some type of horizontal rowing motion. I realized with most clients, not everyone, there's always exceptions. I literally program that in almost every day they go to the gym because I found that it was almost impossible.
Not impossible. It was very hard to make anyone worse and almost everybody got better. Whereas pressing motions, most people probably had a history of kind of overdoing that. Especially guy dude bros who want a bench, every day they go to the gym. If you found any sort of, ratios or kind of words of wisdom of programming those movements across like a week or how you would set up their program?
Dr John Rusin: Absolutely, and I would say that over the years, this is the thing that I've taken the most amount of shit for by the science-based crowd, because watch for them. You'll not find any research papers on what I'm about to say, but this is what works for my clients and I'll repeat it to everyone so they can take appreciation for it.
At the upper body, we like a three to one. Pull to push ratio, meaning that this is [00:48:00] a rep in a volume base drive, and it is for every three reps of a row or a pull up or a pull down or whatever it is with the pull pattern. We want one rep of push, and this is built into the warmups. This is built into your prehab rehab and your cool downs.
And of course, your strength and conditioning three to one ratio is really nice. And then if you want to deep dive in a little bit more from that, we want to have a two to one ratio between horizontal pulling or rowing to vertical pulling. Vertical pull example would be something like a pull up or even something like a shrug.
So that's for the upper body, three to one, two to one. You want to do a whole lot of posterior chain work and you want to be able to alter the angles of pull. For the lower body, very similar. We see that many times people are just in need of a stronger posterior line, and we have a three to one ratio between hinging and squatting.
And then we have a two to one ratio between direct glute work to direct hamstring work.
And [00:49:00] this is something that drives a huge amount of volume into the glutes, the hamstring, the posterior chain, and then a lot of hinging variations versus bilateral squatting. In my opinion, I think the two most accessible movements for every single person on earth, no matter their age, no matter their injury history, or their demographic, is going to be the horizontal pole and the single leg pattern at the lower body split squats, reverse lunges, lateral lunges, things like that.
We can have a huge amount of success there. And the best thing about both of those patterns. It mitigates the risk of injury because biomechanically we're just a little bit more sound from the get go. And then when we actually tap into the neural skill component of doing single leg work and doing horizontal row base work, we really tap into a huge amount of strength muscle mass, and the ability to actually utilize the body the way that I think it was naturally designed to.
When we think about pulling with a single arm training on asymmetrical single leg stances, [00:50:00] 85 plus percent of our movement lives happen in single leg stances. But it's usually the polar opposite between bilateral versus unilateral work that happens at lower body directed training. So those are the ratios that I like, and it doesn't mean that I use them for everybody, but if I'm gonna put together a program that is gonna be used by hundreds of thousands of people, I am gonna have a gun pointed at my head to try to have success with the most amount of people.
And that's the kind of ratio that I would.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Oh, that's cool. One thing I've started doing lately is for horizontal rowing. I have one of the Beyond Power of the Vulture one device, if you've seen that.
And it's awesome because you can set concentric and eccentric different. And so like a simple progressional have people is like week one when you're doing that eccentric.
So you're taking six seconds and the machine's pulling you back, do a five to 10% eccentric and then go up by like 5% each week. And it's, and this would be more for, I'd say advanced people, but even people learning, like just having that longer eccentric, you tend to have a little bit [00:51:00] better form. And in terms of biasing more of that horizontal movement, that seems to be working out pretty good too.
So think, give that's a little bit more fancy, but I like the idea and the principle.
Dr John Rusin: Definitely. And I do think the big differentiator between horizontal polling and single leg is that we're able to naturally tap into the body's asymmetries with rotation.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yep.
Dr John Rusin: Rotation is the name of the game when it comes to being able to optimize neural linkages of the kinetic chain.
Being able to potentiate power and transference of force and when it comes to actually things not hurting, when you can allow that hand to rotate the elbow, to rotate the shoulder, to the rotate the scap, to lead it, the thoracic spine to go into side bending and extension simultaneously, all on a single arm pattern.
All of a sudden it's like, man, that just feels right. That looks like people. Thousands and thousands of years ago, like clubbing, animals to death, like as their functional training. And it's like there is something to that. The same thing can be said at the lower body when we [00:52:00] can add rotational components at the pelvis, at the knees, and at the hips, and actually utilize that ball and socket based joint, which is a beautiful thing.
It tends to spare the spine, hammer the muscles and allows us to get into, dare I say, more athletic looking positions, which is a knee forward plus a hip pinch. And that is the definition of that lunge pattern that differentiates it from its bilateral counterparts.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah, that's another movement I've been using a fair amount is take like a high pole point and then do one hand split stance and then as you're, you can start palm down or palm up.
I usually start palm down and as I'm coming back, I'm rotating to end the palm up, like cross body in a bilateral stance. So you've got torso movement, you've got one hand loading, you've got that heavy, eccentric pull at the end, and you're going very slow. You're not trying to do these violently, so obviously progress to where your tissue can tolerate it, but it's amazing how many people like that movement and how often a lot of their other weird kind of niggly stuff just disappears [00:53:00] after a few weeks too.
Dr John Rusin: Probably for like five or six years I've been doing this half kneeing single arm row on a cable stack. And I go all the way into protraction and upward rotation of the shoulder blade. I allow the hand to go into internal rotation. Yep. Shoulder into internal rotation, then reverse it, just like you're saying.
Yep. And then I have the opposite arm working in like the running man position to integrate the scapular mechanics on the opposite side. And then I have like 200 gym bros being like, this is the dumbest thing I've ever seen for lat hypertrophy. And then I have like NFL strength and conditioning coaches being like, man, that's a beautiful looking movement.
And that's something that we integrate as well. And it's like, yeah, not every single thing needs to be an isolated hypertrophy exercise. Sometimes we need integrated movement models being able to be spliced in with some other direction, whether it be strength or hypertrophy or even more symmetrical power.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. Even with the clients I have that are purely just physique and handful compete in physique based sports. I still have some of those types of movements in there. I [00:54:00] have lateral movements, I have unilateral stuff, skater hops and sticks. Like it'll, and at first they're what the hell is this?
This isn't for hypertrophy. I'm like, not directly, but we're trying to keep you relatively human shaped and move like a normal human. Because if you get too far away from that, I can guarantee that your injury risk is gonna go up and if you get injured, you can't really train that specific thing.
So like the movement you described, maybe not the best for extreme lap hypertrophy, but I think if you take that lens, and I've worked with some of these athletes, like they're odds of them having pain are pretty high and their movement just doesn't look very good. It looks like a cobbled bunch of parts you just threw clay at and just, Hey, look at 'em.
I just get worried that their risk of injury is going to go up. And if we, like you said, back to consistency. No matter what our goal is, if we can get to the gym and do it consistently without a lot of pain, odds are we're gonna get to our goal faster.
Dr John Rusin: I think that's the [00:55:00] mission of pain-free performance, said very astutely by you right there.
It's being able to just be well-rounded and known very well that not every single exercise or not every single training day needs to be hyper-focused on a singular goal set when we can hybridize. People's training programs, we keep them healthier, we keep them recovering, we keep them moving well. And then when time comes to be able to distribute more emphasis and volume towards that specific goal set, say it's bodybuilding or physique, then we're actually healthy enough to drive up the volumes and the intensities even in caloric deficits and things like that gets them to their goals healthier.
And then my biggest thing is if I do have a physique athlete or somebody like that, yes we want to get them to stage, but we wanna get them off of that stage and we want them being able to be healthy and functional in their off season. And we can't just like burn the bridge after the show and then just hope everything's gonna be okay in three or four months.
We just need to be able to always have a bare minimum maintenance of all [00:56:00] physical characteristics and all of your patterns.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah, last question while I'll ask you where you can get the book and everything, I know you've done several seminars with the Great Christian Thibodaux and any fun stories you wanna tell in public?
Dr John Rusin: Yeah, so, you can get the book Amazon Pain-Free Performance by Dr. John Russ. Perfect. Amazon is our go-to right now, and yeah, I had the privilege of traveling the world in 2016 with Coach Tips and that was an experience because many of the different places that we went, we were not we were not doing a whole lot of English speaking except for the seminars that we were giving.
So we were in Poland together. That was an interesting one because, we're in pretty good shape. We're both bald brothers and when we went to Poland, there were coaches in our course that were like 270 pound sheer muscle, and they were listening to us talk about atrophy, and it was a weird translation thing [00:57:00] because we're like.
I know he wants to say something about how small I am and how big he is. Yeah. But he can't quite get it across, and that was the big laughing joke the entire time. But that was the start of my speaking career working with Coach Tibs over that year's time. It was a real big eye-opener and it was an opportunity of a lifetime because previous to that point, the only speaking that I did was mumbling over my, my doctoral education courses and trying to present in front of my students and also my faculty.
So, opening up the ability to not only learn from a world class speaker, but be able to travel the world and learn about what the fitness industry and what the sports performance industry was outside of the walls of just America. It was a great opportunity that led to a lot of different international things for me in later years and even today.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah, I remember getting his, was it Black Book of Training Secrets, like got eons ago?
Dr John Rusin: Yeah.
Dr Mike T Nelson: And the thing, the biggest thing I got from that book was obviously super cool. Like no one was writing about that stuff at [00:58:00] that point, but it also almost gave me permission to be like, oh, you can go super hard down some of these areas and it's okay.
'Cause at the time, like many years ago, I thought, oh, you gotta be a generalist. You gotta, be able to help everyone else. And here's this book that's like hyper specific and all these different methods and stuff. And I'm like, oh, it's okay to do that if you want to do it. Oh, cool.
Dr John Rusin: Gives you permission to just go train hard with the focus.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome man. Well thank you so much. I would highly encourage everyone to check out the book on Amazon. Your website still. I know you've got some stuff on social media, so where else can they find you?
Dr John Rusin: All social media is at Dr. John Russin, Facebook, Instagram, also YouTube, and then Pain-Free Training and dr john russin.com.
Those are the two websites you can check out more.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Awesome. Well thank you so much. I'd highly recommend everyone pick up the book for sure. And thank you so much again for coming on here to discuss it. It was good to see you again.
Dr John Rusin: Thanks so much, Mike. Appreciate you.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Thank [00:59:00] you.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for listening to the podcast. We really appreciate it. A big thanks to Dr. John Russin for being on the podcast and sharing with us all his knowledge and make sure to check out his book, Pain-Free Performance, move Better, train Smarter, and Build an Unbreakable Body. We'll put a link to it down below on Amazon.
Don't make any money off of it, but wanted to support him with the book. And it is a monster. It is extremely comprehensive and I think you'll enjoy it. One thing I do like about books, especially for the end user having written a few, they are a pain in the butt to write and to do, but for literally not a ton of money.
You can get all of that author's thoughts laid out and easy to understand way. Well, most of the time. At a [01:00:00] very cheap price. So to me, it's crazy that you can get somebody's, almost their entire complete system for, 50, 80 bucks, a hundred bucks, whatever. It's a very great value.
So check out the book there no disclosures or anything else with that. Also, check out the newsletter. If you wanna be on the Fitness Insider, it is free to join. Go to mike t nelson.com. And we'll have a link there for newsletter, or you can go to the link below here in the show notes. Also check out our friends over at Beyond Power, the Vol Ultra One.
If you're looking for kind of a portable cable stack that you can actually change the strength curves on it. You can do a chains mode, you can do an inverse chains mode. I like doing a lot of the phasic stuff from Coach Cal Dietz. I always say I helped with the Phasic two book where you can do a heavier eccentric component automatically.
And I think that is very useful and the device makes it super easy to use and you don't need an app to [01:01:00] run it. You can just punch everything in on the screen. So I'm the very basic with training. I still have old school notebooks that I write everything down, and a lot of times I just don't want to be bothered with my phone.
So you can run it directly through the device. You don't need a monthly membership or anything like that. They have an online app that you can use if you really want to do that route, but it's not required. So check them out down below. If you have any questions, hit me up. It is an affiliate link, so I do make a few clams off of that.
So thank you so much for listening to the podcast. Really appreciate it. Big thanks to John Russin for being on here. Please leave us a review, thumbs up, subscribe, all that kind of cool stuff that helps with the old algorithms to get us more great guests. And if you could do us a favor and subscribe to the YouTube channel we'll have a link for that down below.
That would be great. I know most of, probably 95, 90 8% of his stuff is audio. We're trying to [01:02:00] expand the YouTube channel a little bit and more subscribers is always greatly appreciated there. So thank you so much and talk to all of you next week.
Speaker 3: Hey, what are you doing? I dropped my gum. Hey lady, would you toss my gum up?
You could have taken it out of the wig first.
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