364. MITCH SADOWSKY: Increasing Explosive Endurance, Kettle Bells for Golfers, the Power of Breathing

0:00:04 – Jeff Pelizzaro
The 18STRONG Podcast, episode number 364 with Mitch Sadowsky from Aretas Performance. What’s up guys? Welcome back to the 18STRONG Podcast, where we are here to help you build a stronger game, because we know that every golfer deserves to play better, longer. In this episode, I’ve got one of my good friends, mitch Sadowsky from Aretas Performance, coming on the show. He joined us many moons ago back in episode number 16 of the 18STRONG Podcast and we brought him back on because Mitch is one of the top strength coaches in the world of golf. He was down in Florida for a long period of time working with a lot of professional golfers and has now moved back to Wisconsin where he’s still working with golfers but a lot of other athletes as well as bridging the gap between physical therapy and general population, that gap where people are finishing up with either their injuries or the rehab and finding a way to get back into their sports, their athletics, or just into their life. In this episode we talk about a lot of kettlebell strengthening. Mitch is one of the top coaches that I know and he’s an expert in not just strength training and coaching but in utilizing different tools like kettlebells to help strengthen in a little different way than most think of when they think traditional strength training. We talk a lot about different ways to build strength and power and explosiveness. We even talk about the idea that golf is, yes, it’s, an explosive sport, but it’s also an endurance sport because it takes such a long period of time to play, sometimes over the course of days. Mitch has been kicking around some different ways of training for explosive capacity that we go into a lot of detail on. We talk about rucking, we talk about breathing, we talk about a lot of different ways that you can train whether you’re a professional golfer, a collegiate golfer or just a weekend warrior like most of us and how that’s going to help you improve not just your game but your overall health. So you’re really going to enjoy this episode with Mitch.

Right after this, our partners over at Linksoul have been providing us with the best apparel for both on the course and off the course, from polos to t-shirts like the one I have on right now. Everything that they have is meant to be worn from the golf course to wherever you’re going next, whether that be casual, whether that be to the beach, there’s all different options over there. So go to 18strong.com slash Linksoul. You’ll get 20% off of anything in your cart over on Linksoul’s website. So again, 18strong.com, slash Linksoul for our favorite brand of apparel, for anything on the golf course and off. Now let’s get to this week’s interview, mitch Sodowski. Welcome back to the 18strong podcast. Thanks, man.

0:02:57 – Mitch Sadowsky
It’s great to be back on. We were trying to figure out which episode it was. It was 16. Yeah, number 16.

0:03:02 – Jeff Pelizzaro
I think that was back in 2015 is when that originally was, and we had started the podcast right at the end of 14. And then you and I got to hang out at the World Golf Fitness Summit in October of that year out in California in Carlsbad. And then it was love ever since.

0:03:24 – Mitch Sadowsky
Yeah, we were roommates, your statement that it was us, and I think, and Clint Howard and Nick Mueller, and Nick Mueller, yeah, and Lizzie Pals was there and we had the whole crew man.

0:03:39 – Jeff Pelizzaro
That was pretty awesome. That was awesome.

0:03:41 – Mitch Sadowsky
Yeah, yeah, for sure. Long time ago Back when I was a fish talk. That’s right, that’s right.

0:03:47 – Jeff Pelizzaro
Best fish tacos over in Carlsbad. That’s back when both you and I had dark, luscious beards. Now they’re big and white and gray.

0:03:56 – Mitch Sadowsky
Well, it’s luscious, just a lot whiter.

0:03:58 – Jeff Pelizzaro
That’s true, very, very true. So, howard things man. So you are, you’re up in more of a cold climate. You were down in Florida when I originally first met you, working down at Lake Nona, and now tell everybody where you are and what prompted the move.

0:04:13 – Mitch Sadowsky
Yeah, so you’re a little bit of a circuitous route. We moved from Orlando to South Florida and 2000, late 2017. Little bit for my wife’s job, but there’s some good opportunities down in South Florida for me. Got a chance to work with a lot of really really close friends. Bars Was at Coastal Performance, now for Fred with Brendan Hayden and was working a lot with Dr James Spencer, don Stanley, hugo Batero just really really solid crew of guys down there that we all worked really well together from the men’s side and performance side and what was able to refer out quite a bit.

And then we started talking about a year ago, so our daughter’s three, our son’s a year and a half, and we started talking a couple of years ago about getting our family back up to Wisconsin where I grew up, where my parents are, my sisters. It just worked out. So, actually through Jason Glass, I met a couple of guys who went through his mentorship and we met. I met Nate and Scott, probably around 2016,. 17 down in Orlando and Nate’s the first guy that I see coming in to the hotel and he’s got a Milwaukee shirt on and Wisconsin people like magnets to each other. So then, hey, where’d you get that shirt. I grew up there. So he and I started talking. We both have the same volleyball background, the same volleyball community in Milwaukee where we grew up, and he was a DPT, owned his own clinic. And from your performance side, I said, dude, I don’t need a good reason to come up home, so let’s see what we can work on. And we, you know I was able to come up visit a couple of times do some performance clinics at their facility.

And then, about two years ago, we started talking and said, hey, what are you doing for your performance program as your patients are moving out of PT? He said we don’t have anyone. I said, what would it look like if that was me? And he said, well, let’s talk. And last November we were up visiting family and it just got accelerated. I looked at my wife and said, hey, it’s time to get the kids back home.

So I saw Nate. Actually, that night we were at a box game with some other friends and I met Nate at half time. I said, all right, dude, let’s do this, let’s build something really, really big and it fits our visions and our dreams. And we started moving towards it in January, I think or sorry, not January, I think July 12th, 14th, something like that, the movers came, packed our stuff up, we packed everything up with cars and drove on up, and so a little shorter background. So Nate made opened up his own. He was with Team Rehabilitation and he and another guy split off from that company to form Eratos physical therapy. We have two locations and so we opened Eratos Performance in July and we’ve been going since.

0:07:27 – Jeff Pelizzaro
Awesome. So is Eratos Performance. Obviously you worked a ton with golfers. I assume a lot of volleyball players too Is this. Are you working with those two specifically or a little bit of all the athletes around?

0:07:42 – Mitch Sadowsky
A little bit of everybody right now. It’s, you know it’s sliding people over from PT, whether they’re just Gen Pop to firefighters, tactical populations We’ve got I do have a lot of golfers. It’s got. We got a lot of high school baseball players, a lot of high school athletes that are coming off PT. So right now we’ve got a little bit of everybody and you know we’ll be probably doing a little bit more. Specialization in golf is the performance side continues to grow and I would say probably 60, 60 to 70% of my time is continuing to develop our golf performance platform. But right now we’re, you know we’re we’re making sure everybody gets taken care of.

0:08:27 – Jeff Pelizzaro
I love it. I always thought that there was a missing piece in the model of the medical system of you know, going from a physical therapy setting to then just going back out to real life, right?

Or to real sport and not having that crossover, and it seems like it obviously it’s more prominent now than it was, you know, 10, 15, 20 years ago when you guys you and I kind of got into this, this field. But I still feel like there’s a lot of that missing or it’s not something that’s been perfected. And I also see that you guys are working so closely together. Are there physicians that that you guys work with pretty closely too, that are kind of steady referrals to you guys?

0:09:06 – Mitch Sadowsky
Yeah, we’ve got we’ve got a number of orthopedic surgeons that we work with. We’ve got I would say mostly down there a couple other docs from outside that realm that we’re working with, that kind of believe in the not everybody needs therapy but everybody needs strength, that type of philosophy that they can say, well, okay, so if you know your knee is bothering you or whatever, you know you can go to Eratos. But we really want them to understand that. You know we follow the reset, reinforce, reload model through FMS, so that you know, once people start loading and creating a little bit more competency and whatever movement pattern we’re trying to fix, that they can slide fairly seamlessly over to the performance side, which is, you know, we try to make it as frictionless as possible.

We want people to understand that. You know, whatever, whatever misconceptions they have about strength coaches and strength and performance, that it’s really not what they think. It actually does look like like really good PT and good strength training look like really good PT as well. You know we want to bring down as many barriers to entry as possible to get people, you know, living as well as possible. And you know, for our golfers, playing golf is in as high a level as possible for as long as possible.

0:10:39 – Jeff Pelizzaro
With the general population. Clients, what percentage would you say tend to go from physical therapy over to you guys, at least for maybe, and what does it look like? Is it a few sessions? Is it then, you know, sometimes long-term programming and how many people actually take advantage of that?

0:10:57 – Mitch Sadowsky
It’s growing right now. You know, the more I’ve been here, the more people that we’ve met and start to kind of see what we do with our client, with the performance side of things, and so we try to get them over. Or you know, our therapist has done a really good job. They all buy into what we’re doing. They will say, okay, so instead of working with the tech, you know why don’t you work with Mitch for about 15 minutes? You know, here’s what we’ve been working on with them. Mitch is going to show you a few strengthening exercises you can do to help, you know, to help with whatever we’re working on. And then that’s how we sort of force that relationship and try to create that entry point down there.

0:11:40 – Jeff Pelizzaro
Very cool. And then, as far as your I know because you had a whole stable of professional golfers, high-level golfers that you worked with down in Florida are you still keeping in contact and working remotely with them? And then, what does it look like in person at the facility in Wisconsin?

0:11:56 – Mitch Sadowsky
Yeah. So I still have a number of my professional athletes that I work with. They’re on remote programming and then we’ll face time anywhere from one to two times a week and we do almost daily check-ins just to see how everything’s going. You know we’ve got a number of athletes. They’re professional athletes in Milwaukee and if they’ve come to see us for PT we’re reaching out to them to just say, hey, you know, whatever you need from us we’re happy to provide. So one of our collegiate athletes got drafted by the Dodgers this year. He’s still undergoing TJ rehab and you know he’s got some strength stuff that he does outside. But you know, we’ll consult. Just kind of, take a look at this program, say, okay, here’s what we would add in, here’s what we would. You know, kind of use the red light, green light, yellow light philosophy of stay away from, proceed with caution, or scream means go. So we’ll help them out with that. Just kind of be whatever they need whenever they need it.

0:13:01 – Jeff Pelizzaro
The last time you and I had a chance to talk, which was really just a couple of weeks ago, you were kind of kicking around some different training styles that you were working with with some of your golfers. Had a lot to do with utilizing kettlebells and working on some power, also endurance kind of things, just with a little bit of twist compared to, I think, you know, what we think of traditionally when we think of golf and training and strength. Can you kind of dive into that and how has that progressed a little bit? What other insights have you come up with?

0:13:30 – Mitch Sadowsky
Yeah. So you know, when we talked last, one of the things that I’ve been kind of chewing on for a couple of years and talking to people who are much smarter than me is, you know, we talked about golf being an explosive sport, and it is, but it’s also an endurance sport. Even if you’re riding a car, you’re still performing activity. For you know, four, four and a half hours, I got for a bit five hours, but you know it takes a while. You know, when you sway a golf club, you know let’s say you shoot 75, and so let’s say you putt yep, 30 putts, not a great putting round, so you still swung a club 45 times. That sounds to me a little bit more like like an endurance type of an activity as opposed to like a one-off activity. So we started looking at some ideas of creating explosive work capacity. So we took some of the ANA, the anaerobic atlactic protocols that Pommelsozoline and Strannikverse have been putting out and they’ve got a number of different resources. So we I started taking some of those principles and talked to some other people who actually work with endurance athletes and how to use kennel belles as their tool and put together a couple of programs working on those anti-glycolytic training protocols and using that with our golfers to create that explosive and that repeat explosive endurance. And yeah, we really like the results.

You know, I think there’s some nice what the heck effects that come along with that style of training. But in terms of the explosive work capacity, you know, we just did a couple of little RPG things right, a perceived exertion, and see how they fell towards the end of round versus the beginning of the rounds. And you know I wouldn’t say there’s a huge like oh my God, this was incredible. I felt so much better. But there was a noticeable difference as the rounds went on, not necessarily just on Thursday, but how we felt on Saturday, how we felt on Sunday, and I just thought it was different and it was just a different way of looking at and how do we solve this problem?

0:15:58 – Jeff Pelizzaro
Yeah, so can you give us an example of what a training session might look like? How long does it last? What does it entail?

0:16:04 – Mitch Sadowsky
There are a number of different protocols that we use. One of them is a push-up and Kennelbell Swing protocol, and that is it’s called 033B. And the way it works you hit a stopwatch and you hit start. As we hit start, it’s at zero. So you do five Kennelbell Swings as explosively as possible and then you get to rest until the next 30 seconds. When the stopwatch hits 30, you repeat, you repeat, you do five swings. When the stopwatch hits a minute, you do the same. When the stopwatch hits 130, you do the same. Once your Kennelbell Swings are done, you rest, just complete rest, until the stopwatch hits three minutes. At three minutes, you repeat the same thing, but you do that with push-ups. So you do five push-ups as explosively, as quickly as possible, making sure you still go through a full range of motion. You’re not shortening them up to get speed, but you do them explosively and you do the same thing three, three minutes. You do five, three, 30, you do five, four minutes. You do five, four, 30, you do five and then you rest. So that would be one cycle through. We’ll do anywhere from two to three cycles in a session, four at the absolute most. We will never go beyond four because you’re really gonna start running out of juice on your swings or push-ups. It’s a lot of explosive volume and so we’ll just go on to do some other things. We’ll hit some lateral lunges, we’ll do Turkish get-ups, we’ll do different row variations, we’ll still kind of do some suppressing variations. So we’ll hit the rest of our workout, but that’s our explosive phase and we’ll do that two to three times per week. It’s not an everyday type thing at all. So that would be one protocol. The second protocol and this is the one that we were working and we’ve done that with him. He loves, my guys love doing that and girls do it. The main one that we did to look at longer endurance was every 90 seconds, and every 90 seconds you would alternate 10 kettlebell swings and 10 push-ups. So again, we usually would do a timer. But because that’s 90 seconds, you can do an interval timer, you can do a stopwatch, but so you do 10 kettlebell swings, rest till 90 seconds, do 10 explosive push-ups same things, explosive as you can, full range of motion, and then you just repeat. So our goal is to get to about an hour. The primary goal is to get to 30 minutes and still stay explosive.

Our we have a number of different stop signs that we’ll use. So one is getting any type of a hot spot on your hand or you feel like your grip’s starting to go. That would be one stop sign. Second is just loss in power. If you can’t get to 10, you can’t get to 10 explosive swings or you just notice that you just don’t have the same pop, that’s your stop sign. Because we’re out of explosive energy. We’re done, we’re just training something else at that point.

Same thing goes for the push-ups. If you can’t get there, If you can’t do 10 push-ups, that’s fine. Just do fewer, however many explosive push-ups that you can do. You stick with that number and you resist the temptation to go more. So that would be our another stop sign. And the other is you can’t pass the talk test between bounce. So if I do my 10 kennel bell swings and then 90 seconds is up and I’m ready to go, if I’m still kind of huffing and puffing and can’t complete a sentence and talk conversationally, you can do it also with complex math like three digit addition. You’re done because you’re not recovering within that bell. So we’re just done, we move on. We go do some other straight stuff.

0:20:10 – Jeff Pelizzaro
And if you’re doing that for 30 minutes to an hour, that’s gonna be especially if you get up to an hour that’s gonna be your whole session for that day, most likely.

0:20:22 – Mitch Sadowsky
Yeah, yeah, we’ll do some movement prep, some calisthenics, anything to help, just with a general warm-up. We’ll do some sense of swings to warm-up, we’ll do some sets of push-ups to warm-up and then, once we feel like we’re good to go, we go. Obviously, we don’t start in an hour. I think our first couple of sessions we started, I think we got to like 24, 25 minutes. It’s like I could go, but I feel like I’m starting to slow down a little bit, like all right, cool, great feedback, let’s move on. We got another one of these in a week, so we’ll always leave a little bit in the tank and we just move on. And then I think by the time after a couple of weeks, we got up to, I think, 40 minutes.

0:21:17 – Jeff Pelizzaro
And is that so? If you’re doing that once or twice, twice a week maybe? And then how? How many other training sessions and this is with one of your pro, when your pro golfers right?

0:21:28 – Mitch Sadowsky
Yeah, usually with with my professional golfers. Well, I’ve got a couple of people that do five days, but you know those days vary greatly. You know, for most PGA guys and girl and LPGA girls it will probably do three days to four days. I give them a day or two often between.

0:21:47 – Jeff Pelizzaro
We’ll still have some active recovery stuff to do so, but usually three, four is the the norm and if this was somebody that’s a little bit more you know, you’re your weekend warrior golfer, somebody that’s you know More trying to win their club championship or just just play better this coming year, but they want to make sure that they’re they’re, you know, doing a little bit more than the average Joe. How, how are you breaking that up for somebody like that? Are you also having them, encouraging them to do four or five days a week and just kind of piece it out differently? I think it’s always helpful to kind of know, I mean everybody what that looks like.

0:22:23 – Mitch Sadowsky
Yeah, everybody that I sit down with. You know the fruit. You know they asked. You know they asked me how many times a week should I do this? I don’t know. How many times do you want to do like well, what do you, what do you recommend? What’s the best way? I really don’t know. Like I feel, I feel like that’s what I, you know what I do, stuff six days a week, but I know that’s not practical for everybody. So, you know, I would say no less than two for most people. You know just, you know kids life. You know if you can get four in, great, if we shoot for four, we get three. I’d say that’s perfect, as long as we’re doing something. You do something explosive like that. You know, three days, three out of seven days, I think you’re, you’re probably doing fine, awesome.

0:23:07 – Jeff Pelizzaro
When I think of you and and your training and your knowledge, I just immediately think kettle bells You’re. You’re one of the first guys that I’ve known that I would consider you know, like a an expert coach in utilizing the kettle bells as a tool for so many different athletes, different ways of training your body for explosiveness and strength and power. What is it about kettle bells that that you love, and what’s so unique about them that you’ve used that, as I Think of, maybe one of your primary tools when you’re working with your athletes?

0:23:40 – Mitch Sadowsky
Yeah, probably is, or at least it just becomes that one. It’s really easy to sequester Myself and a client, you know, one small space, because we have everything in front of us from an eight kilo to a 48 kilo bell, so that’s 17 pounds to 106. There’s something for everybody within that, within that range. And you can I mean even with you know if you just take a good middling size bell, so like a 12 kilo or 16 kilo, which is 26 to 36 pounds, you can. You can get in a full workout for some rear full training session with just that one bell and you can hit everything. You can get loaded mobility, you can get strength, you can get power, you can get everything that you need and conditioning, you get everything you need with one bell. And I think the versatility of it Is something that that draws me to that, because we can, we can answer a lot of questions With that, with that one tool, and you know we don’t have to go searching around for things.

And you know, one of the some of the feedback I get from show my clients when we write up, when we write a more varied program with More pieces of equipment, is why can’t do this at this gym because as soon as I leave the bench bench gets taken. Or soon as I leave this pulling machine, you know it’s gone as soon as I turn my back. So you know we use a kettlebell. We don’t necessarily have to deal with those those types of issues, we just grab a Mac, grab a bell and get to work. And then the second thing is just the nature of the bell. It’s a gym with a handle. So you know we can, we can do a lot of things with that one tool and you know, when that tool is used appropriately, we get we get really good results.

0:25:35 – Jeff Pelizzaro
I would say that when Most individuals think about a kettlebell, they think of kettlebell swings, maybe a couple. You know there’s a couple exercises, but obviously there’s a whole repertoire that you use water. What would you say are some of the staples that you have in? You know Almost every program that you devise, whether that be a young junior golfer all the way up to maybe even a senior golfer.

0:26:00 – Mitch Sadowsky
Man, so many like you just started one my brain with site face, I would probably say. Our typical ones that get into everybody’s program are Some type of lateral lunge, whether it’s a, whether it’s a low hold, a goblet hold or a single arm rack, goblet squats or a staple single-leg deadlifts, whether it’s a staggered stance or a true single-leg deadlift. I Think for most of my young Well, I wouldn’t say young I think everybody needs shoulder stability. So we do a ton of bottoms up, pressing for shoulder strength, shoulder stability, overhead position. You know, obviously kettlebell swings will do kettlebell cleans, we’ll do a lot of marching In types of different types of carries with the kettlebell. So we can get, you know, we can get a lot of high notes and really just sort of focus on the big six of Push, pull, hinge, squat, carry, some type of midsection work and get everybody in.

0:27:07 – Jeff Pelizzaro
Yeah, I’ve been watching your Instagram a lot lately and you know you’ve been talking a lot about utilizing them for core exercises and and non-traditional. You know, looking core exercises as most people think of your traditional Sit-up or even planks, things like that, but being able to utilize something like this in a whole different way to really help stabilize the midsection.

0:27:27 – Mitch Sadowsky
Yeah, and I think, with when it comes to midsection work, I Think we tend to over complicate things quite a bit. You know, we look at. You know, can we, can we resist Rotation, can we resist lateral flexion, but can we control what we’re doing as well? So can we control rotation, can we control lateral flexion? And I think that’s that that’s really what we try to focus on, isn’t just the creation, but being able to control what we have.

You know, I think with golfers, you know, I tend to take the, the WD 40 duct tape Type of an idea when it comes to midsection of is it moving and shouldn’t? If it’s not moving and it should, we use WD 40. If it’s moving and it shouldn’t, we use duct tape. So we kind of look at the midsection. Is that, you know, are we moving too much? Because we talk a lot about golf mobility and golf movement, but I’ve seen more golfers get hurt because they don’t, they can’t control the movement that they have, and I think, getting people to understand that that we need to work more controlling our movement than we do, just trying to get more, and once that happens, I think there are a lot of, there are a lot of good things that Follow that.

0:28:45 – Jeff Pelizzaro
I mean, I think that’s a huge point that is very much overlooked by Especially the general general population or people that are looking at exercises online or searching for themselves. They constantly think at least this has been my experience they come in and I need to, I need more rotation, I need to be more flexible, I need to, I need to move this further. I need to do more of this. But, to your point, most people can’t control the movement that they do have and and I believe that if they had control over certain parts of the body, the part that they want to move actually would likely move better. And I’ve seen you even utilize the kettle bells and different Strength tools to help facilitate that mobility, which is kind of counterintuitive. People don’t think strength and mobility as being, you know, working together in the same, in the same session.

0:29:38 – Mitch Sadowsky
Yeah, I can’t remember who said it, and it sort of resonated with me a while back I think. I think a lot of people have said it, but you know people that we follow, like Mike Boyle, great me Burton, charlie Weigroth said it. You know, putting a weight in somebody’s hand oftentimes will clean up their squat, and so is that way, is it? Is it a resistance or is it an assistance tool? You see somebody who can’t squat past 90 and you wonder okay, well, we got. You know, do we work on ankle mobility? Do we work on hip mobility? Do we work at forced ability? Where you put a weight in their hand, it all of a sudden their squat cleans right up and it looks great.

You like, wait a minute, we don’t work on any of these things. Maybe they just needed to figure out how to squat, how to load it. It’ll just get better immediately. Yeah, it doesn’t mean that we’re just gonna throw, you know, two wheels on somebody’s back on a bar and their squats gonna look great. But I think it’s a good starting point for them, where maybe we just need to load them a little bit more and Whatever hails them is probably gonna get cleaned up.

0:30:46 – Jeff Pelizzaro
Do you have any set parameters on any of the lifts, say like a goblet, squat or something of of what you’d like somebody to be able to To handle and get in through a full range of motion? Do you, do you set those kind of standards, or is it case by case basis?

0:31:00 – Mitch Sadowsky
Well, I think we always have. We always have some pre, what we would call prerequisites. You know I, I just by the nature of what we do, I don’t do a ton of back squatting. I think you can get a Lot of really good things just from a really heavy goblet squat and then you just build them up from there. You know I, if you really want a good challenge, pick up the beast, 106 kilo battle, get it up here and then goblet squat. You tell me you. Is that a good pre-requisite? I would probably say yes. So I think that’s one.

I think for deadlifts, if somebody is not at a 1x body weight deadlift, I think getting them there is a good start and then giving them to either 1.5 or 2x body weight. But I think the idea of chasing that number can go sideways as opposed to let’s just keep building, we’ll keep progressing, we’ll keep loading and let’s see where we are. So again, that’s something that we’re looking at. You know competency and load, and what does it look like with how much weight you can handle. So, is there such a thing as too strong? No, is there such a thing as not strong enough? I would probably tend to say yes. Do those have parameters. Yes, does that come with it? It depends, yeah, it always does.

0:32:36 – Jeff Pelizzaro
You said there’s. Is there anything such as being too strong? What do you think about some of the serious heavy lifting deadlifts? You know we’ve had Dr Stewart McGill on the show. We’ve had some people on the show that love going as heavy as possible with a deadlift. Dr McGill says it’s ideally not great, for the spine builds a lot of rigidity if you’re going too heavy. Where do you see that risk versus reward kind of come into play when it comes to something like a heavy deadlift? Or I know you mentioned that you don’t do much back squatting, so maybe deadlifts is probably the one to look at.

0:33:14 – Mitch Sadowsky
Yeah, I mean one. You know we’ll look a little bit at some anthropometrics like what does somebody look like? What’s their femur like, what’s their tibial like, what’s their spine like, what are the ratios? That’ll dictate a little bit about what their deadlift looks like. But I think a lot of it is how do you handle the load? How much weight are we putting on you?

If you can pull four wheels off the ground pretty easily, I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with that. If you’re really struggling to get four wheels off the ground, then maybe we need to back off a little bit. I tend to take a little bit of. Let’s look at percentages and what does 80% look like? What does 90% look like? Where do we need to live?

We can live in some fairly reasonable way so that the technical proficiency is there, and then we can challenge you at lower reps where we don’t chase one RM. It’s a nice number, but I want a technical RM. What’s your three TRM? What’s your five TRM? What’s your 10 TRM look like? And then let’s work off of those numbers because everybody wants a one-rep max, just to pop the chest out and see. But I don’t think there’s a lot of carry-on. How well can you do something X amount of times, as opposed to how poorly can you do it once, because nobody’s PR is ever pretty. Everybody who I’ve ever seen get their max back, squat, front, squat, deadlift They’ve all looked like garbage. I want to see how well you can pull something off the ground a certain amount of times and then let’s talk, because that becomes work capacity.

0:35:10 – Jeff Pelizzaro
Yeah, and that’s really where I live too is I don’t really care how much you can lift one time, what can you do repetitively, what can you control? What can you move with speed when you need to move with speed and still do it well. So when you’re out on the golf course you can handle yourself and so we’re not hurting you. So you can’t get out to the golf course, first and foremost, yeah, I mean, the 45 year old doesn’t care what his 1 RM is.

0:35:36 – Mitch Sadowsky
You want RM, a deadlift or anything for a 45 year old. They’re going to be feeling it for days. I’m going to go on a swing at golf club. They’re going to lay on the couch. You know days that I decide that I’m going to or I’m programmed a heavier intensity day.

0:35:54 – Jeff Pelizzaro
I feel it for a couple of days.

0:35:55 – Mitch Sadowsky
I love it. I love that feeling, but not everybody does. I can’t put that. On that, I think we can create adaptations in a way where we’re meeting our client where they are, so that they feel like they’ve gotten some work done, but it doesn’t feel like somebody blew a floghorn into their CNS. I think that’s a little counter into it. Most people who we would both see when they associate deadlift, they associate 400 pounds and somebody yelling and spitting and their face turns red and eventually they’re going to blow off their back. I’m like no, let’s teach you how to deadlift with really good form. Pick something heavy up off the ground and your heavy is not my heavy, but let’s get you picking something comfortably off the ground and let’s build from there, because most people are stronger than they think. We just got to get them to understand that it’s safe and here’s the reasons behind it and we just go.

0:36:58 – Jeff Pelizzaro
Yeah, I think that there’s many times where we underestimate ourselves in the capacity of what we can do in the gym. We get to a certain age us guys that are in our 40s and then into the 50s and assume that we should be starting to back off and not pushing ourselves quite as hard. But I think that when you do actually get in there and put yourself to the test, you realize, wait, I’m actually a little stronger and I’ve got a little more in the tank than I thought I did, which then is going to play out into what you’re doing when you go out on the golf course or whatever physical endeavor that you’re setting out for.

0:37:33 – Mitch Sadowsky
Yeah, I think as we get north of 40, what I found, even for myself, is I can still go pretty heavy. I have to pay attention to I probably pay more attention to volume than intensity. I still like lifting heavy. I just have to pay attention to volume in my sessions or I’ll know that I got a lot of weight moved at a day. I’ll make some adjustments in that training for the next day. If I know that I’ve got a lot of work that I really want to play around with, I probably dial back a little bit in session day to day. But there are just some days where you know what, let’s put some ton of John on this old rig and let’s get it moving and I think the more that we load, the more we can create resiliency. And I think that for the over 40 crowd, creating better day-to-day resiliency is just probably one of the best things that we can work out.

0:38:38 – Jeff Pelizzaro
Let’s take a second to thank our sponsors over at 1st Phorm, and this week I want to highlight their Formula One post-workout protein shake. I use this thing pretty much every day after my workouts because, let’s face it, being here in the gym working all the time with clients putting on a podcast, it can sometimes be tough to get my protein in on a regular basis. And so I know that with the post-workout shake the Formula One, first of all, it’s fast acting. So right after your workout is a great time to get your protein in to help build your muscles, get yourself stronger and repair what you’ve done in the gym. But also, if you don’t know if you’re going to be able to get your protein in in your regular meals, it’s just a great way to make sure that you’re supplementing and hitting those marks.

So be sure to go over to 1stPhorm.com forward slash 18STRONG to get your 1st Phorm Formula One protein shake, and everyone that enters through that link is going to be put into a drawing every single month for free 1st Phorm products. So, again, go over to 1stPhorm.com forward slash 18STRONG. What about for that crowd in regards to kind of what we were talking about before, the explosiveness and building that not just you know. Obviously, as we hit age 40, I think we tend to see that, you know, year by year by year, our speeds tend to decrease from a golf standpoint, but doesn’t have to necessarily. What are some of the things that you would recommend golfers look into doing or incorporating that help to build some more of that explosiveness, whether that be certain exercises or just certain techniques or different ways that you found to really help to build that up?

0:40:17 – Mitch Sadowsky
Don’t stop training explosively in the first place.

I think that’s key. I think most people can just slow down a little bit, like they’ll lift weights, you know, maybe not do as many med ball slams, or they’re doing med ball slams, it’s just not with the intent that we would need. I mean, you’ve got to come out of your shoes max effort, break the ball, put a hole in the floor, you know anything, anything possible that’s that’s as explosive as possible. I think we need to do that more often and not conflate the idea of strength and conditioning. And there’s a reason, there’s an and in between, but we also have to understand that there’s an or as well.

When we do something explosive, do it explosively and then just rest, hatch some downtime. Let’s not rush from one thing to the next to try to make it strength and conditioning all at once. You know, explosive work has its time, it’s got its place and let’s do that at the beginning of the workout, but do it as explosively as possible when you’re fresh and then let’s move on to our strength stuff and give it its due when you’re doing it.

0:41:36 – Jeff Pelizzaro
Something that I’ve heard you talk about is also that’s really important when you’re trying to build speed is building your brakes as well and Learning how to handle that speed. What do you mean by that?

0:41:50 – Mitch Sadowsky
Well, I’m working on a deceleration. You know working. You know, if you work on mobility like mobility is its own session, you really want to create long lasting range of motion changes. There’s got to be some intense there as well, rather than, you know, just doing some quadruped T-spot rotations, thinking all of a sudden this is gonna help, this is gonna help me rotate more. It’s like no, I mean, you’re just sort of warming up through a range, but you know, creating changes in that end range it is its own mobility session. But then we have to go.

Once we get that new raise, we actually have to learn how to access it, how to operate within that range. So we have a little bit more intense on on what we’re doing when we, when we build brakes no, like what we’re to loop this back around. I like what we were talking about earlier with core Not just gaining, not just using our midsection to create rotation, but to control the rotation, so that you know when are most people getting hurt. It’s not in their backswing, it’s in the finals here. Why? Because we have to do a better job of Controlling how far and how fast we go. So you know a lot of the. You know squats, legends, things like that. Those are gonna build bigger brakes for us so that we have the ability to control how fast we go.

0:43:17 – Jeff Pelizzaro
What are techniques to be able to do that, like? What are some of the things that you incorporate into Aside from just your, your typical squat lunge? You know the typical patterns.

0:43:28 – Mitch Sadowsky
I I think isometrics are awesome. I Don’t know too many of my clients that are like man great, we’re doing. I so holds today. They’re difficult, they’re challenging but by they provide a lot of big bang for your buck. There’s a lot of time under tension. There’s a lot of good hormonal responses to come from isos. There’s a lot of isometric that we use in our and from our PT side here. So I think those are good. Sometimes it’s just picking something heavy up being learning how to control that. I’d say those are probably the two, two easiest, lowest hanging pieces of three.

0:44:08 – Jeff Pelizzaro
When, when you’re looking at mobility on a lot of your golfers, where do you find some of the bigger issues? As far as you know, we talked about how everybody comes in and says they think they need mobility, they think they need more flexibility, but sometimes there are legitimate cases of areas that are tight or stiff or uncontrolled and not able to move. What are a couple of the ones that you know? We, I think we tend to think of the T spine, we think of the hips. Are there any other ones that you really see that we don’t really pay attention to?

0:44:39 – Mitch Sadowsky
Well, I think that I think the two biggest things for me are feet. What are your feet doing? And how many people are barefoot? How many people are walking around Letting their toes move, letting their feet move? That’s you know. That’s one I would say. The second one is breathing. We just get a lot of people who Breathe really, really inefficiently. You know, everything’s up into the shoulders and they breathe here instead of the rib cage being able to expand. I would say that the better you breathe, the better you move and the better your posture. And you know, when it comes to golf, your golf swing is going to be a reflection of your movement patterns, and median patterns are going to be a reflection of how what your rib cage moves, how well you breathe and what your posture looks like. So I think there’s you know there’s some really good benefits. You’re just cleaning those things up at the beginning and saying, okay, so it’s your way to adjust those things. Now let’s start laying a few other things on from there.

0:45:36 – Jeff Pelizzaro
I’ve also seen you highlight recently just even the, the lats, the lat length in A lot of the golfers, and you mentioned before that you do a lot of overhead stuff. You think it’s very important for for people to work on their overheads. How does the, how do the lats and what this tight is there? How does that impact a golfer and what does that look like in their golf swing and what does it look like when you, when you then help them improve that?

0:46:00 – Mitch Sadowsky
So one of the things oh for everyone that’s familiar with the TPI golf screen being able to control pelvic tilt and what your posture looks like. It’s set up how, where the lats attached through the lower back and the faster the lower back a Tight, short lat is going to give you that as posture. It’s going to pop your chest forward, it’s going to bring the lower back into that interior till. Everything along this side, along the lats, is going to be tight. That’s also going to affect being able to reach across their body. So that’s our lead arm being able to come across into the back swing, that’s the trail arm being able to reach, stay long, keeping straight arms through impact. So being able to have a back that moves better, having better lat length.

We do test the overhead flexion position to check lat length as well. That because really really important for us. We know, for you know, we know what what swing faults are created through poor lat lengths and poor, poor set up posture. So I think that’s a it’s an under under appreciated standpoint. It’s set up and that’s also one of the reasons why we we address breathing so much as well as we can get a much more Neutral pelvis position, putting somebody in supine on their back, getting a more neutral pelvis and then getting them to breathe Efficiently from there, and I can clean up a lot, of, a lot of issues.

0:47:30 – Jeff Pelizzaro
Yeah, I’ve. I’ve really come to appreciate over the last couple of years and through you know, watching people like you and a lot of the other coaches that we’ve had on the show the importance of working on breath work for myself and with clients and how that it can impact even neurologically what you’re doing. You know the your breath has so much to do with the way that your body responds, how well you’re going to get into that motion and how well you’re going to utilize that mobility and it’s it’s really kind of opened my eyes to how much it impacts your posture and ultimately impacts your performance day to day.

0:48:05 – Mitch Sadowsky
Yeah, there’s a. There’s a lot of really really good. Again, what the heck benefits of proper breathing mechanics? Just from oxygenation in the blood, how well we move, being able to toggle between sympathetic and parasympathetic just Americans, by nature, are Stuck in sympathetic overdrive. We don’t know how to toggle down. We can’t get in a parasympathetic when we need to. We can’t calm down. We have a harder time sleeping, like they’re just this cascading effect of Not being able to to control those two areas of our nervous system. And so that’s one.

Yes, obviously sleeping is a huge part of recovery and, and you know, even just from breathing you can learn how to brace better. And when you learn how to brace, that’s going to affect our how we control our body at impact. If you have a really good ability to brace, absorbing a punch, we are able to strike the ball with Much less deceleration and inertia when you contact the ball, because this is for somebody that doesn’t know how to brace. So I think there’s a lot of really cool crossover things between breathing mechanics and and golf. I learned so much just from Reading the book, the book breath, by James Nester. There’s a lot of really really cool things in there, but I think everybody can benefit from yeah, that that book is.

0:49:38 – Jeff Pelizzaro
It was a much better read than I anticipated to. You know, I was thinking it was gonna be like this very clinical kind of science-y based book. But he he’s actually a writer I think he was from the New York Times or whatever and tells it like a story. So I I’ve recommended that to some people and like really, I’m gonna read a book on breathing. I’m like, no, trust me, this is actually a good read. There’s there stories in there that you’ll appreciate. But that book completely opened my eyes as well. This kind of takes me back to our, our conversation a couple weeks ago when we were talking about, you know, the training that you were doing with the, the explosive capacity stuff. But then we were talking about Rucking. Are you still having some of you guys rocking, or? And do you do you rock? And for those that don’t know it, rucking is explain that to to the folks.

0:50:25 – Mitch Sadowsky
Yeah, so I mean it’s. It’s pretty simple. You just load a backpack up or load a bag up, draw it on your back, go for a walk, go as far as you can is comfortable using. Can you know again, you don’t have to you load any pounds up into a pack all once. I you know, even if you start with 10, 15 pounds and just go for go for a walk, go, go for walk through nature if you have access to hiking trails or, you know, just go for walks through your neighborhood.

There are a lot of good benefits to the bath for Backstrength course, stability. One of the things they talk about in the book breath that I started doing and then I’ll have my golfers to is nasal breathing only while rocking. So you can take just a piece of medical tape and put it across your mouth or just consciously put this which you’re telling us through to your mouth. You just breathe through your nose for the entire walk. It’ll feel kind of self-regulate how quickly you go, but you’re, you’ll get a lot of like again.

I really like what the heck benefits, which are ancillary benefits, not the main one, but you just kind of go. Huh, I, you know I was focusing on this and this got better what the heck like. I wasn’t even trying to do that, but I’ve had them do that for a number of reasons. One, like I said, getting onto that sympathetic overdrive back into parasympathetic, learning how to breathe more expansively through the rib cage because better rib cage movement or better golfers, and then just loading up work capacity. So, yeah, I try to get my golfers, my athletes, to do that once a week. I try to do that a couple of times a week, whatever I can, just to get outside.

0:52:15 – Jeff Pelizzaro
I’ve come to love it as well. But I hadn’t thought about the, the nasal breathing, intentionally until Talking to you, and so I’ve really made it a point to do that on on my walks and, and you know, just trying to feel the expansion of the, of the abdominals and even the expansion into the lower back and into the side, and it really does make a big difference. Plus, like you said, the what the heck benefits of? Like focusing on your breathing Makes you focus less on all the other stuff going on in your head. It’s almost like a walking meditation, which has been really, really Special, I think, and I think that so many people can benefit from just going for a long walk, maybe throw a little weight on on their back, as opposed to doing some of the crazy Cardio stuff that we tend to lean on, where we’re increasing the stress on our body while trying to get that movement and activity. Going out and doing something along these lines where you’re actually almost de-stressing a little bit while getting that activity, can be massively beneficial.

0:53:13 – Mitch Sadowsky
Right, right. And most people, when they’re on a cardio, a piece of cardio equipment, they’re they’re adding more stress and actually using it to To de-stress or or get the end up a better, better state. So you know I, if it’s an opportunity for them to toggle down, I’m all for it.

0:53:34 – Jeff Pelizzaro
What it would have your pro golfers thought of it. Did they look at you a little crazy when you first suggested A little bit yeah.

0:53:42 – Mitch Sadowsky
Yeah, it’s like what you just want me to. You know, we we start off with with silver bar. It’s like an active recovery day where we do a lot of calisthenics, a lot of a lot of ground based movement for about 15 minutes and then it’s like load up a backpack, little 20 pounds in there and just go for a walk, start, start out at a half hour and then let’s, let’s build up from there and like why do you want me to do that? That’s all we’re doing, and go for a walk.

0:54:09 – Jeff Pelizzaro
Now you’re actually in a landscape where you have some, some hills, as opposed to Florida where you’re like walking through it’s not all flat.

0:54:16 – Mitch Sadowsky
Yeah yeah, we have a lot more hills here than in Scottson. Awesome, there’s Luke Holder here too. It’s a. There’s a 40 and rainy here Absolutely my favorite weather.

0:54:26 – Jeff Pelizzaro
You know what. There’s something, there’s something to be said to loading up a pack, getting your stocking cap on bundling up a little bit. You just feel a little bit more like a man when you go out in the cold and you’re doing it too.

0:54:37 – Mitch Sadowsky
Oh well, yeah, I mean, that’s why we’re out here, to keep the face warm.

0:54:40 – Jeff Pelizzaro
That’s right, that’s right.

0:54:43 – Mitch Sadowsky
And I had to get to blend into snowstorms.

0:54:47 – Jeff Pelizzaro
All right, my friend, we’re gonna. I know that we asked you these questions, or versions of these questions, but this was you know how many years ago. So we’re gonna, we’re gonna re ask, so just to see if any, any answers have changed. So, first of all, caddy Shack, or happy Gilmore.

0:55:01 – Mitch Sadowsky
Oh, caddy Shack, that’s not even a question.

0:55:05 – Jeff Pelizzaro
All right, if you could pick a walkup song to the first T-Box. What’s, what’s your walkup song these days?

0:55:14 – Mitch Sadowsky
Well, it should be and always will be. Hell’s Bells by ACGC.

0:55:18 – Jeff Pelizzaro
That takes me back to pledging for my fraternity. So I get like kind of like makes the hairs on my arms stand up a little bit, but great call.

0:55:25 – Mitch Sadowsky
It’s what, it’s what, yeah, I mean it’s what. You know when, when Trevor Hoffman would come out like you just know, when you have that walkup song or that walkout song, you know that guy has his song and it’s about to, it’s about to be on, like, to me it’s just Hell’s Bells, awesome.

0:55:45 – Jeff Pelizzaro
All right. Is there a book that you like to recommend to people that’s had a big impact on your life, and that could be fitness golf life? Whatever it is that you like to recommend.

0:55:55 – Mitch Sadowsky
Yeah, two books. One of them, one of them one of my clients down in South Florida right, it’s called the Power of being Yourself by Joe Clemari PLUMERI. It is an outstanding, outstanding book, joe’s. Joe’s probably the most successful person that nobody’s ever heard of, except a lot of people have heard of him. He’s got a lot of commencement speeches on YouTube that are just I mean, he’s awesome.

Joe goes hard. 80 years old, he’s up trained from six to 645 every morning. He’s just an animal, in fact. I think I don’t know if he listens to podcasts. He should. Andrew Riley works with him at Integrative Exercise in the Hamptons, andrew works with him in the summers and I would work with Joe at the Wears. Joe’s just I mean, working with him is like getting your MBA every morning. He’s just an incredible human with an incredible story. So that book is an awesome listen and read. So I think everyone should get that.

The second is Burn the Boats by Matt Higgins, who the book just came out. It’s in the last year. So I think for everyone that gets stuck into the what, if or if I could only do this or if I could only do that, you just have to take this step. That’s why we moved to Wisconsin. We left everything that we had in Florida, which was a line. We left it all behind. You can’t be successful if you leave yourself out. You’ve got to burn the boats and go. There’s no plan B, there’s no turning back, no one’s come to help you. You just have to go and there’s no failure, because it’s not an option. I think those two books are probably the most impactful ones that I’ve read, and they’re probably more resources than they are books.

0:58:00 – Jeff Pelizzaro
Fantastic. I’m putting both of those on my two read lists ASAP and we’ll link those up in the show notes as well, just so everybody listening can go there. All right, if there’s, if you could go play a round of golf with anyone in the world past, present, celebrities, famous people, whoever who are you taking to play?

0:58:22 – Mitch Sadowsky
Just use the joke answer because I like a little chaos in my life. But Brooks, Bryson and Phil but in all honesty, past, present, future, the only people I want to golf with are my dad, my two grandfathers that have passed. My dad was one of the reasons why we moved back up. I wanted to get the kids closer to him. But family is everything to me. I was really close with both my grandfathers and I would give everything to be able to have another four or five hours of life with them. So dad and grandfathers Fantastic.

0:58:59 – Jeff Pelizzaro
All right If we could fuel up the 18STRONG jet and we’re taking you anywhere you want to go. You could take grandpas and dad. You guys can go play any course in the world. Where are you going to go If we said, mitch, we’re leaving tomorrow? Where are we heading?

0:59:15 – Mitch Sadowsky
Shooting Star. Go see my boy Ben Pollan up there, jackson Hole. Shooting Star, I love mountains, I love mountains and I love golf and I don’t think there’s any better place to do that. So I’m going to give Ben and Shooting Star a little shout out.

0:59:30 – Jeff Pelizzaro
Sweet, I’ve never heard of it. I’m looking that up immediately. Have you been there already?

0:59:36 – Mitch Sadowsky
I’ve not. I just get to see Ben’s pictures on Instagram and then shoot her messages.

0:59:41 – Jeff Pelizzaro
Lovely, all right. Well, we’re going to have to go follow Ben, which leads into our next question Is there a social media account that you think the 18STRONG crew should go follow and that you’ve been digging lately, whether that’s golf or fitness, or makes you laugh, whatever it is? Who should we go look at?

0:59:59 – Mitch Sadowsky
A friend of the show, allie Gilbert. I think Allie does an amazing job of making men’s health fun, relatable, accessible and just bare bones, no holds barred. She tells it like it is. I think more men need that. We shouldn’t be afraid of men’s health issues, and Allie just does an amazing job of making it white sized and explainable and understandable for most men. So I think that’s a really good one.

And then just something that I’m really passionate about is following regenerative farmers of America. I’m really big on regenerative farming practices. I think we have a huge problem in our country with corporate farms and we need to support our local farmers wherever we are. They’re farmers in every city and every state. I think we need to do a better job of supporting them. Buying from local farm stands, buying your meat from the farmer that slaughters their own cattle. I think it’ll do an enormous job helping our environment, helping our societies. We don’t have nutrient-dense food anymore. I think we need to do a better job in that realm of life, and it’s something that my wife and I are really passionate about. So go check out regenerative farmers in America and support them. Buy your meat from them, not your big grocery stores. Go to your local farm stands whenever you can.

1:01:37 – Jeff Pelizzaro
Awesome, I love it. I have an uncle who is up in northern Missouri and he’s running his father-in-law’s cattle ranch and we get most of our meat from up there, so it couldn’t second that more Awesome.

1:01:51 – Mitch Sadowsky
It tastes better, it’s better for you, and if I can help a farmer live a little bit better life rather than a CEO, I’m totally cool with that.

1:02:03 – Jeff Pelizzaro
Man and people don’t realize how tough farming is, especially now the small farmer, and by small. A couple thousand acres is small, right, it’s unbelievable. So very cool, all right. Last thing what’s the best piece of golf advice that you’ve ever received?

1:02:23 – Mitch Sadowsky
Be a goldfish. We all live for that one shot, just that one ball that we just absolutely smoke and it just feels pure off the face and most people say, why can’t I do that every time? Be a goldfish, just enjoy it. Don’t worry about the shanks, don’t worry about the one you hit in the rough, don’t worry about the one you lost in the water. Just be a goldfish, go hit the next ball. Just go make that next shot a little bit better.

1:02:58 – Jeff Pelizzaro
Great advice. Mitch, my friend, where can everybody go follow you and see everything that you’re doing? You’re doing a great job putting a lot more out on social media. We’ve been reposting a little bit. We’ve got to get better reposting some of your stuff but where can they go find you?

1:03:13 – Mitch Sadowsky
At Mitch Sudowski, mitch SADOWSKY and at Eritos Performance. A-r-e-t-a-s Performance on the IG for both.

1:03:24 – Jeff Pelizzaro
Awesome Buddy, can’t thank you enough for coming on sharing your wisdom with us, and hopefully we’ll be seeing a lot more of you on the 18STRONG page. I think we’ll have a few projects put together in the near future that people can look forward to.

1:03:40 – Mitch Sadowsky
For sure. Thanks for having me on again. This is awesome. Always love our chats on and off the ether and always look forward to it, man.

1:03:49 – Jeff Pelizzaro
Hopefully soon it’ll be in person, maybe to another World Golf Fitness Summit.

1:03:53 – Mitch Sadowsky
I know we’re driving distance now.

1:03:55 – Jeff Pelizzaro
Yeah, for sure. All right, buddy, we’ll talk to you soon All right, dude, talk soon.

1:03:59 – Mitch Sadowsky
Thanks, jeff, Appreciate you.

1:04:03 – Jeff Pelizzaro
Thanks for listening to the 18STRONG podcast and if you found this episode helpful, don’t forget to share it with your friends. And, of course, go follow us over on Instagram at 18strong. Thanks again, We’ll catch up with you next week. Train hard, practice smart and play better golf.