Henry Abbott
Appearances
Habits and Hustle
Episode 452: Henry Abbott on Misogi - The Extreme Challenge With a 50% Chance of Failure
I do.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 452: Henry Abbott on Misogi - The Extreme Challenge With a 50% Chance of Failure
Isn't it like, yeah, I do. Do you know?
Habits and Hustle
Episode 452: Henry Abbott on Misogi - The Extreme Challenge With a 50% Chance of Failure
Oh, it does?
Habits and Hustle
Episode 452: Henry Abbott on Misogi - The Extreme Challenge With a 50% Chance of Failure
I'm going to read that chapter. That's the chapter I did not read.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 452: Henry Abbott on Misogi - The Extreme Challenge With a 50% Chance of Failure
A skyscraper. What's the point? So this idea, why did he do the idea of doing this Misogi? Yeah. Yeah. It was basically picking one thing a year that you're doing that is something that you think you have a 50% chance of actually completing basically. It's like a super hard challenge.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 452: Henry Abbott on Misogi - The Extreme Challenge With a 50% Chance of Failure
We also talk about the science behind mental limits, Henry's journey through chronic pain, and why pushing to the edge might be exactly what you need to break through. So let's dive in. Before we dive into today's episode, I want to thank our sponsor, Momentus. on NSF certification, which means every single batch is tested for heavy metals, harmful additives, and label accuracy.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 452: Henry Abbott on Misogi - The Extreme Challenge With a 50% Chance of Failure
What's the purpose of it?
Habits and Hustle
Episode 452: Henry Abbott on Misogi - The Extreme Challenge With a 50% Chance of Failure
It's the concept of doing hard things to show and prove to yourself that you can do hard things. So it gives you the confidence to do something again or different.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 452: Henry Abbott on Misogi - The Extreme Challenge With a 50% Chance of Failure
How badass is that?
Habits and Hustle
Episode 452: Henry Abbott on Misogi - The Extreme Challenge With a 50% Chance of Failure
And they just like one day an animal was like, hey, I'm going to try to fly. I got this. And then they just started flying.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 452: Henry Abbott on Misogi - The Extreme Challenge With a 50% Chance of Failure
Like maybe one day one of them will. So can one day a human could just try to fly? Why don't you just go outside and try to fly? Have you tried?
Habits and Hustle
Episode 452: Henry Abbott on Misogi - The Extreme Challenge With a 50% Chance of Failure
You think so?
Habits and Hustle
Episode 452: Henry Abbott on Misogi - The Extreme Challenge With a 50% Chance of Failure
Do you think humans are going to be able to fly one day?
Habits and Hustle
Episode 452: Henry Abbott on Misogi - The Extreme Challenge With a 50% Chance of Failure
Like what?
Habits and Hustle
Episode 452: Henry Abbott on Misogi - The Extreme Challenge With a 50% Chance of Failure
Yeah, I guess I just... It's limitless to what we can actually achieve.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 452: Henry Abbott on Misogi - The Extreme Challenge With a 50% Chance of Failure
So is the idea that this place tells people that they need to choose and pick a Misogi every year so they can then not feel limited by anything and get rid of limited beliefs of themselves?
Habits and Hustle
Episode 452: Henry Abbott on Misogi - The Extreme Challenge With a 50% Chance of Failure
What am I doing? That's so scary.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 452: Henry Abbott on Misogi - The Extreme Challenge With a 50% Chance of Failure
So he did a paddleboard without ever doing one before. Yeah. That's so dangerous though too. Isn't there like a, like there's a fine line between being bold and being stupid. Yeah.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 452: Henry Abbott on Misogi - The Extreme Challenge With a 50% Chance of Failure
Oh, that's another rule?
Habits and Hustle
Episode 452: Henry Abbott on Misogi - The Extreme Challenge With a 50% Chance of Failure
Wow, that's a good one.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 452: Henry Abbott on Misogi - The Extreme Challenge With a 50% Chance of Failure
Very important. What else did you learn about pain and how to...
Habits and Hustle
Episode 452: Henry Abbott on Misogi - The Extreme Challenge With a 50% Chance of Failure
Push through pain, maybe.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 452: Henry Abbott on Misogi - The Extreme Challenge With a 50% Chance of Failure
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Habits and Hustle
Episode 452: Henry Abbott on Misogi - The Extreme Challenge With a 50% Chance of Failure
Right, right, right.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 452: Henry Abbott on Misogi - The Extreme Challenge With a 50% Chance of Failure
Welcome to Fitness Friday. Today I'm joined by journalist Henry Abbott to explore Misogi, which is a powerful practice where you take on a challenge so tough there's only a 50% chance you'll finish. Think underwater 5Ks with rocks. or nine-hour paddleboard treks through sharky waters.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 452: Henry Abbott on Misogi - The Extreme Challenge With a 50% Chance of Failure
Well, they say, like, even when you get, like, to stop moving is, like, that's what becomes deadly, right? So, like, when... I'm like you, I need to move. I'm not someone who does well being sedentary. So even when I have the flu or something, like I have to really feel terrible because movement is, to me anyway, movement is like, it's like life, right?
Habits and Hustle
Episode 452: Henry Abbott on Misogi - The Extreme Challenge With a 50% Chance of Failure
Like if I have a bad back, even with an injury, I still walk to get the blood circulating. Did they teach you that back there?
Habits and Hustle
Episode 452: Henry Abbott on Misogi - The Extreme Challenge With a 50% Chance of Failure
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Habits and Hustle
Episode 450: Henry Abbott: The Hip Stability Secret for Aging Well + Why ACL Tears Are 8x More Common in Women
Hi guys, it's Tony Robbins. You're listening to Habits & Hustle. Crush it.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 450: Henry Abbott: The Hip Stability Secret for Aging Well + Why ACL Tears Are 8x More Common in Women
Like you want someone with expert eyes looking at your body, right? And they're saying, oh, and then like, what happens now is you get hurt first and then you go to physical therapy and then it's customized for you.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 450: Henry Abbott: The Hip Stability Secret for Aging Well + Why ACL Tears Are 8x More Common in Women
Right. Right? Yes, 100%. And, you know, and it's a little sad to me. Like, I was doing PT for a while at this place where they had, like, a track and all the sports equipment. Because I think the idea was they'd have these, like, elite athletes being explosive in there. Yeah. But everybody in there is so broken. They never use the track, right? Of course. That's right.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 450: Henry Abbott: The Hip Stability Secret for Aging Well + Why ACL Tears Are 8x More Common in Women
Yeah.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 450: Henry Abbott: The Hip Stability Secret for Aging Well + Why ACL Tears Are 8x More Common in Women
That's a big deal.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 450: Henry Abbott: The Hip Stability Secret for Aging Well + Why ACL Tears Are 8x More Common in Women
Yeah. So there are 25 illustrations in the book of like, cause I was like, they're obsessed with elite athletes there. Right. And, and they will tell you, they're like, Henry was so annoying with asking me so many questions about like the rest of us.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 450: Henry Abbott: The Hip Stability Secret for Aging Well + Why ACL Tears Are 8x More Common in Women
Right. Okay. They, he, I mean, they won't say this, they won't admit this, but like they call us normies.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 450: Henry Abbott: The Hip Stability Secret for Aging Well + Why ACL Tears Are 8x More Common in Women
It's all normie. I tried to capture as many of the things as I could. Writing about it is a little bit tricky because you need to really see what you're supposed to do. For instance, their warmup, It's amazing. There are days where I got up and felt like the Tin Man. And, you know, I'm 50, and I would go downstairs and be like, oh, my gosh, I think I broke something.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 450: Henry Abbott: The Hip Stability Secret for Aging Well + Why ACL Tears Are 8x More Common in Women
But I would just do the warm-up. It's 13 steps. I have them memorized. You can do it in, I don't know, 10 minutes. And it's a little bouncy, and it's got a little bit of stuff that you don't normally have. And now I've noticed, actually, at different races or whatever, I'm like, oh, that person's doing the P3 warm-up. Like, there's a little cult that we're in now.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 450: Henry Abbott: The Hip Stability Secret for Aging Well + Why ACL Tears Are 8x More Common in Women
So there's a picture. Every single step is illustrated in there. But, you know, it's... Walking, you go back and forth at the gym a bunch of times. And first you're walking on your heels, then you're slapping your toes down, and then you're doing two different, no, three different kinds of lunges. There's, is that standing figure four thing?
Habits and Hustle
Episode 450: Henry Abbott: The Hip Stability Secret for Aging Well + Why ACL Tears Are 8x More Common in Women
There's, you've probably done the thing a bunch of times where you put your hand on the wall and swing your leg like a hamstring stretch. Then you're on the floor for a bit, rotating your spine various ways. There's a lot of rotation, tons of rotation in all of their recommendations. Why? Because that's another neurological training. Okay. You know, there's, this is a mind blowing thing.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 450: Henry Abbott: The Hip Stability Secret for Aging Well + Why ACL Tears Are 8x More Common in Women
There's nobody in major league baseball who didn't grow up playing baseball. Basketball is full of players who didn't know basketball, but because baseball is hitting and throwing, which are both rotating things. And if you didn't grow up practicing, like you're not as good as people who did like just, and so a lot of us, I didn't grow up with any, I didn't play any baseball.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 450: Henry Abbott: The Hip Stability Secret for Aging Well + Why ACL Tears Are 8x More Common in Women
But I, anyway, you want to rotate, you want, this is going to be a part of aging. Well, right. You want to do things that rotate.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 450: Henry Abbott: The Hip Stability Secret for Aging Well + Why ACL Tears Are 8x More Common in Women
We all have weird stuff with our hips. Like every single person.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 450: Henry Abbott: The Hip Stability Secret for Aging Well + Why ACL Tears Are 8x More Common in Women
Yeah. And so it plays in that space too. It does? Yeah, because... So if you think about the egg again, right? And so now you're this free-falling egg and ideally you're going to... be bouncy because of like a rubber band of your glutes, right? Right. This is practicing kind of getting the force there, if that makes sense.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 450: Henry Abbott: The Hip Stability Secret for Aging Well + Why ACL Tears Are 8x More Common in Women
It's just, you know, again, the nerves are going to control all your, there's 600 muscles in the body and they're controlled by the brain, basically. And it's going to like teach them to get it snappier, get it better, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So every single person in the SS at P3 has had hip issues basically, but they fit in one or the other category.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 450: Henry Abbott: The Hip Stability Secret for Aging Well + Why ACL Tears Are 8x More Common in Women
This is probably the most important thing I will tell you today. So everybody's hips are either unstable or immobile and you should know which group you're in and I can tell you how to find out. So actually I asked Marcus at one point, I'm like, well, how do I know if my hips are immobile? And he's like, I think you know.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 450: Henry Abbott: The Hip Stability Secret for Aging Well + Why ACL Tears Are 8x More Common in Women
that's hilarious but just in case you don't like the way you check that one would be to get into like a pigeon or you know pigeon from yoga or do you know standing figure four i don't really want to demonstrate it but like okay so standing figure four so you stand up and then i would take like my right ankle and cross it over my left knee and then sit down yep
Habits and Hustle
Episode 450: Henry Abbott: The Hip Stability Secret for Aging Well + Why ACL Tears Are 8x More Common in Women
While you're still bouncing on one leg and butt back, chest up, and you want to kind of bounce. If you can really sink into that position or sink into a pigeon, I think we all know if you're not sunk in. If you can sink in, then we're going to say your hips are very likely mobile enough. And then for stability, this one's a little hard. If you do a side plank,
Habits and Hustle
Episode 450: Henry Abbott: The Hip Stability Secret for Aging Well + Why ACL Tears Are 8x More Common in Women
but the kind of side plank where your body's a complete X. So your leg is elevated, your arm is elevated, and then this is different than any other side plank I know, all 10 toes pointing forward. So your body's a big X. If you can lock that out and hold it, then we're gonna say that your hips are stable enough.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 450: Henry Abbott: The Hip Stability Secret for Aging Well + Why ACL Tears Are 8x More Common in Women
And what we find, what they find is that basically everyone who lifts weights should do yoga and everyone who does yoga should lift weights because basically the people with mobile hips make them more mobile with yoga, right? And people with stable hips make them more mobile with weightlifting, but they should switch, right? Because the people with stable hips need to work on mobility, right?
Habits and Hustle
Episode 450: Henry Abbott: The Hip Stability Secret for Aging Well + Why ACL Tears Are 8x More Common in Women
And people with mobile hips need to work on stability. Either one could get you needing a hip replacement, right? You want to have a little bit of both.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 450: Henry Abbott: The Hip Stability Secret for Aging Well + Why ACL Tears Are 8x More Common in Women
You need both. We all need both.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 450: Henry Abbott: The Hip Stability Secret for Aging Well + Why ACL Tears Are 8x More Common in Women
This is how we're going to age well. Yeah.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 450: Henry Abbott: The Hip Stability Secret for Aging Well + Why ACL Tears Are 8x More Common in Women
Right.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 450: Henry Abbott: The Hip Stability Secret for Aging Well + Why ACL Tears Are 8x More Common in Women
Right.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 450: Henry Abbott: The Hip Stability Secret for Aging Well + Why ACL Tears Are 8x More Common in Women
And leg up.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 450: Henry Abbott: The Hip Stability Secret for Aging Well + Why ACL Tears Are 8x More Common in Women
It's so hard.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 450: Henry Abbott: The Hip Stability Secret for Aging Well + Why ACL Tears Are 8x More Common in Women
This is like 5% of people are going to pass this test, I think. Right.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 450: Henry Abbott: The Hip Stability Secret for Aging Well + Why ACL Tears Are 8x More Common in Women
So I think if you, so you need work on hip stability and it's very knowable, right? I, you know, I guarantee that within a mile of here are 10 trainers who know how to help you with that. If that's what you're working on, right now you have a target, right? You can do it on YouTube probably, but you want someone to.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 450: Henry Abbott: The Hip Stability Secret for Aging Well + Why ACL Tears Are 8x More Common in Women
Yeah.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 450: Henry Abbott: The Hip Stability Secret for Aging Well + Why ACL Tears Are 8x More Common in Women
Oh, what happens to me is I just feel weak. Right. You just can't get up. You can't do it. Right. I can like, I can, I can. And then what?
Habits and Hustle
Episode 450: Henry Abbott: The Hip Stability Secret for Aging Well + Why ACL Tears Are 8x More Common in Women
So you're tweaking your routine a little bit. Right. I think you, you know, whatever, whatever you're doing to work out. I think a lot of us, you know, when you're 25, you can do it all wrong and it's fine. Right. Right.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 450: Henry Abbott: The Hip Stability Secret for Aging Well + Why ACL Tears Are 8x More Common in Women
Yeah.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 450: Henry Abbott: The Hip Stability Secret for Aging Well + Why ACL Tears Are 8x More Common in Women
how do you know if you're stable or mobile or whatever you're gonna be shaking or collapsing or quitting you know if you're unstable then you go to do the yoga or the weights then if you're you go do the weights yeah the way it's going to be more strong yeah you're going to be squatting and you know um i i've i've always had a mobile hips like everyone in my family no not my wife's family but everyone like my blood relatives yeah we are the immobile hip crowd
Habits and Hustle
Episode 450: Henry Abbott: The Hip Stability Secret for Aging Well + Why ACL Tears Are 8x More Common in Women
Oh, totally. We're cool like that.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 450: Henry Abbott: The Hip Stability Secret for Aging Well + Why ACL Tears Are 8x More Common in Women
Yeah. I mean, there are women who have immobile hips for sure. And there are men who have mobile hips. But like, yeah, you're right. That's definitely... Mobility is more likely in women for sure. And so I always thought of... very mobile hips is just like way better, right? Like the yoga teacher, I'd be like, oh man, like she's going to live forever with this, right? Right.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 450: Henry Abbott: The Hip Stability Secret for Aging Well + Why ACL Tears Are 8x More Common in Women
But only from this product that I learned, like, no, like a lot of super mobile people need hip replacements because they just don't have the musculature to keep it together. Think about how we're talking about, oh, here's the thing I learned that blew my mind. In my assessment when they assessed me, I mentioned you're standing on a box and you step off and land on the force plate.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 450: Henry Abbott: The Hip Stability Secret for Aging Well + Why ACL Tears Are 8x More Common in Women
Well, when I stepped off, my hips dipped. The foot that's out over the space, that hip just fell. They stopped the video and they're like, why are you doing that? I'm like, I don't know. I thought that was what we do, you know? That's not what we do. Like you're supposed to keep your hips level, right?
Habits and Hustle
Episode 450: Henry Abbott: The Hip Stability Secret for Aging Well + Why ACL Tears Are 8x More Common in Women
It's supposed to be like when you do most exercises, like the glute on the standing leg should be engaged and it's supposed to hold that stuff together, right? And then the other one can be mobile and bouncy, right? But you're supposed to control your hips. I was walking around without good control of my hips in
Habits and Hustle
Episode 450: Henry Abbott: The Hip Stability Secret for Aging Well + Why ACL Tears Are 8x More Common in Women
And I feel like that's what happens to a lot of these elite yoga athletes is that they're, you know, if they were running down that mountain path or whatever, their hips are going to be flopping around.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 450: Henry Abbott: The Hip Stability Secret for Aging Well + Why ACL Tears Are 8x More Common in Women
This is what I've learned recently.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 450: Henry Abbott: The Hip Stability Secret for Aging Well + Why ACL Tears Are 8x More Common in Women
I don't honestly know the answer to that. I know that this ACL thing is ridiculous rates in female athletes, right? It's 8x men. And so I just, I'm a little bit of a women's soccer fan. And I don't know if you know, Emma Hayes is the new coach of the US national team. There's 11 players on the team and she's getting a crew of 50 ready for the World Cup because you can't count on Wow.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 450: Henry Abbott: The Hip Stability Secret for Aging Well + Why ACL Tears Are 8x More Common in Women
There's just so many. And since she got the job just recently, when their star defender is out for a year with ACL tear, there are several out now. I think there are three players out right now. In the last Women's World Cup or in the Olympics, every single team had a player out because of ACL tear. It's just like rampant. For women. For women.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 450: Henry Abbott: The Hip Stability Secret for Aging Well + Why ACL Tears Are 8x More Common in Women
Yeah. I mean, these are very active questions in science right now. And there's a bunch of theories. You know, there could be hormonal explanations. Could be women have wider hips, which permits their knees. There's like this thought that if your knees go in together as you bend your knees, that is an elevated risk of ACL tear. There are so many theories. Women have narrower ACLs.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 450: Henry Abbott: The Hip Stability Secret for Aging Well + Why ACL Tears Are 8x More Common in Women
There's all these theories. But I'm a little bit struck by, so in this granular movement data that my book is about,
Habits and Hustle
Episode 450: Henry Abbott: The Hip Stability Secret for Aging Well + Why ACL Tears Are 8x More Common in Women
they did a massive study of like every single thing that goes into nba players who had acl tears over years basically so if someone has an acl tear then they go back and look at that person's assessment say how do they move and by this analysis it's none of those things i just described like acl tears are caused by landing on the outside of your foot and having the weight roll to the inside like your shin bone is moving like a big windshield wiper right
Habits and Hustle
Episode 450: Henry Abbott: The Hip Stability Secret for Aging Well + Why ACL Tears Are 8x More Common in Women
That's cause number one. Is that more common in women? We haven't studied that yet, right? But I think that would be tip top thing to study, right?
Habits and Hustle
Episode 450: Henry Abbott: The Hip Stability Secret for Aging Well + Why ACL Tears Are 8x More Common in Women
And then the second biggest cause is femoral rotation. So this is where, this is gross, but you go with my analogy. You know when you have the Thanksgiving turkey and you like twist the leg off?
Habits and Hustle
Episode 450: Henry Abbott: The Hip Stability Secret for Aging Well + Why ACL Tears Are 8x More Common in Women
Well, I'm using my arm against the upper half of your leg. For some people, when they squat down, your upper leg bone twists inside your leg. And you can imagine that would be extremely stressful, like on your ligaments in your knee, right? So the first problem is managed by stronger muscles in the lower leg, like we've been talking about, right?
Habits and Hustle
Episode 450: Henry Abbott: The Hip Stability Secret for Aging Well + Why ACL Tears Are 8x More Common in Women
The second problem is managed by stronger muscles in your hip. Like your hip has... That bone in your upper leg has little knobs on it, and there are muscles that grab it and hold it in place and keep it from rotating. And you can just strengthen those muscles and make it stronger. And you do that with all sorts of difficult work, like side planks.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 450: Henry Abbott: The Hip Stability Secret for Aging Well + Why ACL Tears Are 8x More Common in Women
But this is why yoga teachers are more important to some of these problems, right? It's because they're very flexible, and you kind of want to be rigid in that particular way. So I think this is the...
Habits and Hustle
Episode 450: Henry Abbott: The Hip Stability Secret for Aging Well + Why ACL Tears Are 8x More Common in Women
like this would be the first place to start for me if i'm talking about like leading injuries for women right is these two things have been studied in men and they have not been studied in women uh they're kind of that's so weird yeah so the way men like p3 is an expensive place for professional athletes to go and mostly like adidas pays for them to go or their agency or uh how much is it i don't honestly know it depends what you know like like right now there's nba players going there before the draft for seven weeks
Habits and Hustle
Episode 450: Henry Abbott: The Hip Stability Secret for Aging Well + Why ACL Tears Are 8x More Common in Women
So that's going to be a lot. I went for three days, right? That's going to be a four-figure number, right? But they just started having, just in the last year or two, by the time I was writing the book, Aaliyah Boston was the number one WNBA overall draft pick, and Hayley Jones was, I think, the sixth pick. They were there.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 450: Henry Abbott: The Hip Stability Secret for Aging Well + Why ACL Tears Are 8x More Common in Women
That was the first time that the shoe company paid for women basketball players to go. Wow. And so there have been a bunch of women through there, but it's only 15% of the thousands of athletes they've had. So, you know, the industry didn't fund that before, right? But it's starting to.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 450: Henry Abbott: The Hip Stability Secret for Aging Well + Why ACL Tears Are 8x More Common in Women
And so I think I'm trying to find ways that they could just assess like a thousand soccer players at once just to get a big data set to start answering these questions. I think that's what the future will look like. I think it's important that a lot, you know, without this data set, we're looking at all these things like ligament width and it's not likely the cause, I don't think.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 450: Henry Abbott: The Hip Stability Secret for Aging Well + Why ACL Tears Are 8x More Common in Women
so one of the answers you won't like and one of them you will i think okay i like that the one that you won't like is that they we're going to come soon to a point where there'll be some way to like assess your own biomechanics right like you want to do a workout that's designed for you like when they put the exercise on the board and everybody does the same workout yeah it's it's
Habits and Hustle
Episode 448: Henry Abbott: Preventing Injuries Before They Happen + The Soviet Secret to Athletic Power
Hi guys, it's Tony Robbins. You're listening to Habits & Hustle. Crush it!
Habits and Hustle
Episode 448: Henry Abbott: Preventing Injuries Before They Happen + The Soviet Secret to Athletic Power
Totally agree. So they would put you on a progression. There's a million ways to strengthen your lower leg and hopping wouldn't probably be like job one for you. Lifting weight, honestly, I used to strain my ankle all the time. I once had a doctor tell me like never play basketball again because I was like so prone to ankle sprains.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 448: Henry Abbott: Preventing Injuries Before They Happen + The Soviet Secret to Athletic Power
And then for other reasons, I started lifting weights 10 years later. I've never turned my ankle since then.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 448: Henry Abbott: Preventing Injuries Before They Happen + The Soviet Secret to Athletic Power
I mean, I'm not happy about it. I would be more fun to meet you feeling 100%.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 448: Henry Abbott: Preventing Injuries Before They Happen + The Soviet Secret to Athletic Power
All right, let's explore.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 448: Henry Abbott: Preventing Injuries Before They Happen + The Soviet Secret to Athletic Power
You are, this is, we're opening with a pop quiz, Jen.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 448: Henry Abbott: Preventing Injuries Before They Happen + The Soviet Secret to Athletic Power
I don't think I am. I can tell you this. So I spent three years marinating in this like movement data from this place called P3 in Santa Barbara, where they're 35 years into gathering it all. And almost everything that
Habits and Hustle
Episode 448: Henry Abbott: Preventing Injuries Before They Happen + The Soviet Secret to Athletic Power
goes through there these are thousands of athletes almost all the recommendations are to change something about how you move in the feet or the hips so like knee injuries mostly come from above and below and i really came to think of it did you i did not the answer doesn't have to be yes but did you take physics class where you do that egg drop experiment i did okay and you use like pipe cleaners and duct tape or whatever materials okay
Habits and Hustle
Episode 448: Henry Abbott: Preventing Injuries Before They Happen + The Soviet Secret to Athletic Power
This book has tons of physics in it. I had to learn and like nod along, but I hated physics class. I just, it was literally, I was a great student, but I had that one class. I was like, I don't even care what you're talking about. But okay, so you got the little egg. Now think of your upper body is that egg, right? This is 80% of your weight is in your torso.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 448: Henry Abbott: Preventing Injuries Before They Happen + The Soviet Secret to Athletic Power
And our like pipe cleaners and duct tape is our legs. These are the little devices we have to make it so our egg doesn't shatter when you land from running. When you jump off of whatever, one of their biggest assessments they do is you step off an 18 inch box and just land on these force plates on the floor.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 448: Henry Abbott: Preventing Injuries Before They Happen + The Soviet Secret to Athletic Power
so they're really well designed for it you know we have a good system for this if you land correctly right right they want to land with your toes up on the balls of your feet and do this stiff ankle and the force is going to go into your calves and then you're then it's going to go into your quads and it's going to go into your glutes and those muscles can handle a ton of force
Habits and Hustle
Episode 448: Henry Abbott: Preventing Injuries Before They Happen + The Soviet Secret to Athletic Power
safely in the old age but if you get a little weird right we all move a little weird we sit a lot we you know exercise strangely we have odd habits for instance if you land on your toes then you're the next thing that happens is your heel slams down which accounts for all of the biggest measurements they have all of the biggest landing forces come from that heel slapping down because now your egg right yeah
Habits and Hustle
Episode 448: Henry Abbott: Preventing Injuries Before They Happen + The Soviet Secret to Athletic Power
is pushing on down through your knee onto bone the lower leg bone the tibia and it's like like a pull cue like punching the ground right it's instead of passing the forces through soft tissue it's passing through that bone like that's a very common and popular way to hurt your knee is like the force of the ground is traveling up to your knee through this hard device, right?
Habits and Hustle
Episode 448: Henry Abbott: Preventing Injuries Before They Happen + The Soviet Secret to Athletic Power
Yeah. So there's a little, this is what they're doing there mostly, you know, and then the other big area focuses the hips.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 448: Henry Abbott: Preventing Injuries Before They Happen + The Soviet Secret to Athletic Power
So if you think about it, like the ankle and these lower leg muscles control how the lower leg bone expresses the force of the ground and the hip controls how the upper leg bone expresses the force of your torso coming down and they're going to meet at the knee and hopefully they meet well, right?
Habits and Hustle
Episode 448: Henry Abbott: Preventing Injuries Before They Happen + The Soviet Secret to Athletic Power
And they sound like they have been for most of your running life, but maybe there's a little something. If you went there right now and they assessed you, my guess is they would find, you'd be there for an hour. They'd be like, hey, Jen, there's a little something. We got to strengthen this thing in your hip or we got to do some of this thing in your lower leg.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 448: Henry Abbott: Preventing Injuries Before They Happen + The Soviet Secret to Athletic Power
Well, there's a whole bunch of, like you can go on YouTube and find, my daughter right now has a thing, she's doing toe yoga. I don't know if you've gotten into this. Have you seen this at all?
Habits and Hustle
Episode 448: Henry Abbott: Preventing Injuries Before They Happen + The Soviet Secret to Athletic Power
I'm doing it with my hands a little bit, but if you like lift your big toe and you separately lift the little toes and like there's all these little muscles in the foot that you can strengthen.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 448: Henry Abbott: Preventing Injuries Before They Happen + The Soviet Secret to Athletic Power
So it's called toe yoga. Yeah, if you look up toe yoga, that's not really a PT recommendation that I've seen, but they do a ton of stuff. So, you know, if you think of our calf muscles, the kind of like, there's this kind of two lumpy muscles on the outside, that's the gastroc muscle.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 448: Henry Abbott: Preventing Injuries Before They Happen + The Soviet Secret to Athletic Power
Underneath it is the soleus and the post tib, a tibialis posterior.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 448: Henry Abbott: Preventing Injuries Before They Happen + The Soviet Secret to Athletic Power
They're just going to be like, I assume he knows what he's talking about because in the first five minutes he said tibialis posterior. And now I'm good, right?
Habits and Hustle
Episode 448: Henry Abbott: Preventing Injuries Before They Happen + The Soviet Secret to Athletic Power
So look up those muscles though. You want to exercise them. Like a lot of our exercises really work like what we consider those visible outer calf muscles, but it's those underneath ones that I'm telling you in the research from P3, it's like, it's a major recommendation. You want a lot more work capacity in the lower leg. They had me doing, I went through their procedure and have
Habits and Hustle
Episode 448: Henry Abbott: Preventing Injuries Before They Happen + The Soviet Secret to Athletic Power
my own suite of issues but like this is one of my things and i you know this would be jumping rope hopping back and forth over a dowel every kind of ply metric but you kind of build up into the bigger ones over time and at the same time you mix that in with like stand on one leg you know and raise up and down very slowly and if you can do 15 of those then you're cleared for like bigger contacts.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 448: Henry Abbott: Preventing Injuries Before They Happen + The Soviet Secret to Athletic Power
I was getting back to running after a back thing. I had to get to like, where I could really get to 15 slow raises before they let me start running.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 448: Henry Abbott: Preventing Injuries Before They Happen + The Soviet Secret to Athletic Power
So they're into, at P3, their recommendations are heavy on all of the muscles beneath the knee as a method to stiffen the ankle.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 448: Henry Abbott: Preventing Injuries Before They Happen + The Soviet Secret to Athletic Power
So that when your foot hits the ground to have your powerful foot, the Achilles is loaded.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 448: Henry Abbott: Preventing Injuries Before They Happen + The Soviet Secret to Athletic Power
So like you want to have, they call, they say to land toes up. It's like a little cue. It doesn't really mean you land your toes fully up, but that's, they say that you'll get your foot more on the ball.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 448: Henry Abbott: Preventing Injuries Before They Happen + The Soviet Secret to Athletic Power
No. Great question. They want you on the ball of your foot, but with your toes a little bit flexed up. Instead of being sloppy with a relaxed foot, they want your foot tense and loaded because they want to activate the spring of your Achilles.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 448: Henry Abbott: Preventing Injuries Before They Happen + The Soviet Secret to Athletic Power
They want it so that when your foot hits the ground, you're quickly, subconsciously, this beautiful system will be passing the force of landing on the ground into your glutes, into your butt. Let's kind of go up the chain. If it hits your toes, now we have a kind of slow process of rolling further down to the heel, like I mentioned. If you land on your heel, then you're getting this bony thing.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 448: Henry Abbott: Preventing Injuries Before They Happen + The Soviet Secret to Athletic Power
So you kind of want to be in the middle where all of these muscles in your foot are taking the force of landing.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 448: Henry Abbott: Preventing Injuries Before They Happen + The Soviet Secret to Athletic Power
And if you're doing that, if you think about it, if you jump rope like that on the ball of your foot, if you- Oh, on the ball of your foot.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 448: Henry Abbott: Preventing Injuries Before They Happen + The Soviet Secret to Athletic Power
Great question. So ultimately running the way you want to run where you're not going to have your knee hurt will come from figuring out hips or lower leg where there's some weakness or oddity. That's kind of a dumber like building muscle system. But then there's like the much more clever thing is this like
Habits and Hustle
Episode 448: Henry Abbott: Preventing Injuries Before They Happen + The Soviet Secret to Athletic Power
nervous system, sending a little electrical signals up and down, which kind of happens faster than we can think subconsciously. So when you're jumping these fast things, this is the reason the book is called Ballistic. That means like airborne, right? When you're doing these airborne things, you're engaging this like your brain to get better at landing.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 448: Henry Abbott: Preventing Injuries Before They Happen + The Soviet Secret to Athletic Power
to fire the systems that need to be fired in time. These little things happen in life where maybe you're walking down a mountain trail and you trip a little and you have to throw that foot out.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 448: Henry Abbott: Preventing Injuries Before They Happen + The Soviet Secret to Athletic Power
That could be a moment you would tear your ACL, or it could be a moment that you just go, bink, and on this thing, and you want to have your system practiced and being snappy with the good foot placement and the good knee over the toes and the hips over the knees.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 448: Henry Abbott: Preventing Injuries Before They Happen + The Soviet Secret to Athletic Power
They don't have a lot of recommendations at P3 for everybody, but that's one of them. Almost everybody who's in there gets some weightlifting recommended and some plyometrics. Some of the trainers make fun of the founding doctor, Marcus Elliot, because he just loves the plyometrics so much. To him, it's like everybody should be doing aggressive plyometrics. He wants you to.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 448: Henry Abbott: Preventing Injuries Before They Happen + The Soviet Secret to Athletic Power
What they do is in the first assessment, you can do it with a broomstick. They just lay a dowel on the ground and they put eight seconds on the clock and you have to put your feet parallel to the dowel and you hop back and forth sideways on two feet as many times as you can in eight seconds. There's a guy whose name is Sanford Spivey.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 448: Henry Abbott: Preventing Injuries Before They Happen + The Soviet Secret to Athletic Power
He's a venture capitalist now, but when he was like a Boston University soccer player, I think I'm saying he did it 42 times in eight seconds. Like that's five plus times a second.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 448: Henry Abbott: Preventing Injuries Before They Happen + The Soviet Secret to Athletic Power
They show that video to NBA players and NBA players are like, what? So he's obviously got this really snappy nervous system and good musculature and all that stuff, right? So that's how we start with the plyometrics at P3. And then it just goes up from there.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 448: Henry Abbott: Preventing Injuries Before They Happen + The Soviet Secret to Athletic Power
They do them all different ways. I don't think there's a kind of plyometrics they don't do in there. So it's just, you know, do you know the history of plyometrics? It's so cool. I love this story so much. Please let me tell you the story. Okay, go ahead. Okay. Okay. So in Soviet times, they kind of invented sports science because they just used humans like guinea pigs, right?
Habits and Hustle
Episode 448: Henry Abbott: Preventing Injuries Before They Happen + The Soviet Secret to Athletic Power
They just did tons of testing on like their top Olympians. They just try this workout, try that workout. And they put sensors on them and have them do all this stuff. It was kind of cruel. And there were tons of doping. But this guy, Yuri Verkoshansky, was kind of a heroic early doctor of this. And he did calculations, figured out like when triple jumpers, triple jump is a weird sport.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 448: Henry Abbott: Preventing Injuries Before They Happen + The Soviet Secret to Athletic Power
I've never really, do you know how it works? It's like, Not really. This is going to be wrong. You run and you leap off one leg and then another leg, and then that third leg goes down and you do a long jump. You can do the math of the athlete weighs this much and they travel this far, so that means they're pushing on the ground this hard. This is where the physics comes in.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 448: Henry Abbott: Preventing Injuries Before They Happen + The Soviet Secret to Athletic Power
I would not want to do this calculation. He's like, well, they're pushing on the ground with 300 kilograms of force. But in the gym, none of them can lift 300 kilograms. So like somehow they're magically way stronger when they're doing the triple jump than when they're lifting weights. So he's like, well, maybe if we have them do a shorter lift, shorter lift, right?
Habits and Hustle
Episode 448: Henry Abbott: Preventing Injuries Before They Happen + The Soviet Secret to Athletic Power
Instead of doing a full squat, do like a half squat. And they could lift a lot more, but then none of them came in the next day because their backs all hurt. So there's something about this. And finally he figured out that it's because it's so fast. Like when they push on the ground for the triple jump, their foot's on the ground for like a tenth of a second.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 448: Henry Abbott: Preventing Injuries Before They Happen + The Soviet Secret to Athletic Power
And when you're super fast like that, you have kind of magical ability to access force because you're taking energy from the approach and using it in the explosive jump. Does that make sense?
Habits and Hustle
Episode 448: Henry Abbott: Preventing Injuries Before They Happen + The Soviet Secret to Athletic Power
So in weightlifting, you're not doing that, right? So that was his big aha moment. And he invented plyometrics right then. He called it the shock method. And basically, he started teaching all these Russian athletes to do all these quick hopping things because you can train to be faster on the ground and you're training all these muscles in your lower leg and such.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 448: Henry Abbott: Preventing Injuries Before They Happen + The Soviet Secret to Athletic Power
And if you're faster on the ground, you're moving more force from one step into the next one. And it's like a huge difference. Like I think some runners carry, I think there's some research that like,
Habits and Hustle
Episode 448: Henry Abbott: Preventing Injuries Before They Happen + The Soviet Secret to Athletic Power
Some runners only need to generate 10% of the energy for the next step because they're carrying 90% from the step before, whereas some runners need to generate 60% of the energy because they're only carrying 40% from the step before. So we're all in the middle there somewhere, but it's a lot less work to run if you're really good at plyometrics, if that makes sense.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 448: Henry Abbott: Preventing Injuries Before They Happen + The Soviet Secret to Athletic Power
I think it's all of these things that are like training you to be really snappy on the ground. So they'll do things like step off a box and jump on the next one.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 448: Henry Abbott: Preventing Injuries Before They Happen + The Soviet Secret to Athletic Power
Or hop sideways or they're like, you know, hop three times on your left leg.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 448: Henry Abbott: Preventing Injuries Before They Happen + The Soviet Secret to Athletic Power
Yeah, it's all just kind of, yeah. Quick jumps.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 448: Henry Abbott: Preventing Injuries Before They Happen + The Soviet Secret to Athletic Power
I think we're putting our finger on your issue. I think this may be why your knee hurts.