Ep. #113: Layne Norton on How to Avoid and Overcome Weightlifting Injuries

Mike Matthews: [00:00:00] Hey, it’s Mike. And this podcast is brought to you by Legion. My line of naturally sweetened and flavored workout supplements. Now, as you probably know, I’m really not a fan of the supplement industry. I’ve wasted thousands and thousands of dollars over the years on worthless supplements that don’t work.

Basically do nothing and I’ve always had trouble finding products actually worth buying and especially as I’ve gotten more and more educated as to what actually works and what doesn’t and eventually after complaining a lot, I decided to do something about it and start making my own supplements. The exact supplements I myself have always wanted a few of the things that make my products unique are one They’re 100 percent naturally sweetened and flavored which I think is good because while our official sweeteners May not be as harmful as some people claim there is research that suggests regular consumption of these chemicals May not be good for our health particularly our gut health So I like to just play it safe and sweeten everything with stevia and erythritol Which are natural sweeteners [00:01:00] that actually have health benefits, not health risks to all ingredients are backed by peer reviewed scientific research that you can verify for yourself.

If you go on our website and you check out any of our product pages, you’re going to see that we explain why we’ve chosen each ingredient and we cite all supporting evidence in the footnotes. So you can go. Look at the research for yourself and verify that we’re doing the right thing. Three, all ingredients are also included at clinically effective dosages, which are the exact dosages used in those studies that prove their effectiveness.

This is very important because while the molecule might be proven to, let’s say, improve your workout performance, not all dosages are going to improve your workout performance. If you take too little, You’re not going to see any effects. You have to take the right amounts. And the right amounts are the amounts proven to be effective in scientific research.

And four, there are no proprietary blends, which means you know exactly what you’re buying when you buy our supplements. All of our formulations are 100 percent transparent in terms of ingredients and dosages. So if that sounds interesting to you and you want to check it out, [00:02:00] then go to www.

legionathletics. com. That’s L E G I O N athletics. com. And if you like what and you want to buy something, use the coupon code podcast P O D C A S T, and you will save 10 percent on your order. Also, if you like what I have to say in my podcast, then I guarantee you’ll like my books. I make my living primarily as a writer.

So as long as I can keep selling books, then I can keep writing articles over at muscle for life and Legion and recording podcasts and videos like this and all that fun stuff. Now I have several books, but the place to start is bigger leaner, stronger if you’re a guy and thinner leaner, stronger if you’re a girl.

Now these books, they’re basically going to teach you everything you need to know about dieting, training, and supplementation to build muscle, lose fat and look and feel great without having to give up all the foods you love or live in the gym, grinding away at workouts you hate. And you can find my books everywhere.

You can buy books online like Amazon, Audible, iBooks, Google Play, Barnes and Noble. Cobo and so forth. And if [00:03:00] you’re into audio books like me, you can actually get one of my audio books for free with a 30 day free trial of audible to do that. Go to www. muscleforlife. com forward slash audio books. That’s muscleforlife.

com forward slash audio books, and you’ll see how to do this. So thanks again for taking the time to listen to my podcast. I hope you enjoy it and let’s get to the show.

Hey everyone, this is Mike and I want to welcome you to a new episode of the muscle for life podcast. And in this episode I am excited because I got to interview Dr. Lane Norton, who you’ve probably heard of, but just in case you haven’t, he is a professional power lifter, bodybuilding coach and actually a host of his own podcast, which is called physique science radio.

And [00:04:00] last but not least, he is someone that’s really at the forefront of the whole evidence based fitness movement and someone whose work I’ve been following for years now. I’ve actually had lane on the podcast before to talk about contest prep, maximizing fat loss, reverse dieting, and a few other topics.

And people really liked the interview. So I wanted to get him back on to talk about something else, which is really the bane of weightlifters everywhere. And that is. injuries. Now, contrary to common belief, weightlifting isn’t nearly as dangerous as many people think it is. And especially when you’re using good technique and progressing intelligently and just generally taking good care of your body.

But if you lift weights for long enough, you’re If you’re eventually going to experience at least a minor injury, even if it’s only a soft tissue problem stemming from repetitive use. And when something like this does happen, it’s really going to frustrate the shit out of you because as anyone that has [00:05:00] gone through it knows and could tell you, it quickly derails your plans and sometimes forces you to train suboptimally for the future.

quite some time so you can actually recover and get back to what you want to be doing. So I wanted to get lane on the show to talk about this subject because as a competitive bodybuilder and powerlifter, he has a lot of experience and wisdom to share on the subject, specifically on preventing and healing both minor and severe injuries.

Now, he himself has gotten hurt in ways that most of us wouldn’t Probably never will because we’re not competitive strength athletes. And so he has also had to go a lot further than most of us ever will into rehab recovery and rebuilding his strength and performance and has learned some pretty important lessons that we can benefit from.

So as you’ll see in the interview lane covers a lot of ground ranging from common mistakes that people make that lead to injuries. To simple indicators to watch for that proceed injury, how to know if you’re [00:06:00] fully recovering from your workouts or not, how to rehab and work around injuries and more.

Here’s the show. Hey lane. It’s great to have you back on the show. Thanks for taking the time. 

Layne Norton: Yeah, no problem. Thanks for having me buddy. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, I know. I appreciate it. We were talking about just schedule and how many things there are to do. So I appreciate it. And I really do understand it. So I appreciate, fitting, fitting this in.

Layne Norton: Yeah, I know, we’ve been trying to do this for three months or something like that, I think. 

Mike Matthews: I know. The subject I want to talk to you about is something that for all you listening, if you’re not dealing with this right now there’s a good chance you’re going to deal with it to one degree or another in the future, and that’s injuries.

Now by injuries, it can be ranging from slight, which is just repetitive use kind of stuff. Inflammation in areas doesn’t just doesn’t feel right to more severe stuff that, can require medical treatment of some kind or, dramatically changing your training and so forth.

And the reason why I wanted to talk to you about that lane is because I know over the last year and a half or so, you’ve gone through a bit of this yourself. And I think that you’ll have some great insights to share with [00:07:00] everybody. Both from the perspective of preventative in, even if there were things that even if, maybe you didn’t even do anything necessarily wrong, but just in educating people at that point, cause for everybody listening, when you’re a new to weightlifting and you’re just on a barbell strength training program, if you learn basic form and you’re just not stupid and you, and you pay attention, You’re not really moving around enough weight in the beginning, usually to run much, much of a risk of anything serious happening.

But once you become a more intermediate and then advanced weight lifter, when you start pulling hundreds and hundreds of pounds or squatting hundreds of pounds, pushing a lot of weight, it doesn’t take very much in a moment to either cause an injury that is acutely painful or to start something like that.

Now there’s, there was something a little bit off and now, three months from now, if you keep going in the same way, you’re really going to feel it. That’s what I thought would be, for today’s talk. 

Layne Norton: Yeah. People will not, they love the injury stuff, but everybody, if you lift weights long enough, you are going to deal with this.

It’s not [00:08:00] Me being doom and gloom. It’s just the facts. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. And you can say that about any sport, right? If you play any sport enough Oh, absolutely. 

Layne Norton: Yeah. This, that’s what, I had people when I got injured, say, oh, see, lane doesn’t know how to lift.

He, and it’s tiger Woods, all he does is swing a golf club. Yeah. And his back’s jacked up. Yeah. You know what I mean? 

Mike Matthews: And his knee and 

Layne Norton: everything. You can be a recreational person and go easy at it, not really push yourself. And you can be in decent shape and that’s fine.

But if you want to be competitive at like high levels, high level athletes get injured. I know people can point to people like, Brett Favre or Cal Ripken or people who like played a long career and never, had an injury break. But if you talk to Cal Ripken afterwards I think he even said in interviews, like there were days that he had no business playing, like he should not have been playing.

And he probably actually hurt his team by playing. But at a certain point, the record became so important that they put him out there anyway, and But yeah, it’s just there’s a reason why very few people make [00:09:00] it through a season without any kind of one break or some kind of nagging injury getting them, if you, I think it’s a pretty unrealistic answer. Expectation for people to come into and say I won’t get injured. Like it’s going to happen. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. Especially if your goal, I think, is to achieve any, like any. Respectable level of whole body strength and it’s just the amount of work and that it’s going to take to get there.

Maybe you can be an outlier and maybe you won’t really run into anything, but if you’re in the middle of that curve, you’re, there’s going to be something. I myself have run into little things nothing major, some biceps tendinitis and a few things that I had to address.

Like I saw a physical therapist and work through and change my training to, cause I didn’t want it to turn into something worse, 

Layne Norton: Yeah you’re going to have this line of, like your injury risk is going to be like here Or normally like I can’t do my hands with It’s me like here.

Yeah, your strength is going to be going up and then the certain point they’re going to go like this Yeah, right So the because once you get to a certain [00:10:00] point of strength your and musculature Your ability to make progress is going to slow weight down and it’s going to require a disproportionate amount of work to get it Yeah.

A little bit of strength or progress back so that you’re always going to be butting up against that. Okay. Work so hard that you can make some progress, but not so much that it causes you to be injured. 

Mike Matthews: And that can be just one of those things of, are you going to go for that PR today or not?

Or are you going to whether it be, if you’re doing heavy one or two rep stuff, or even if it’s higher rep, but it’s just that point where you’re going to have to push yourself outside. It’s. If it’s, if you’re staying within your comfort zone, that can work in the beginning, but there’s a point where now there’s no more adaptation.

Layne Norton: Yeah, exactly. And that’s the point is if you were going to want to progress past a certain point, you have to push yourself past that point. It’s, I know there are people out there that say, Oh, you just do one set to failure. You can just do low volume or just the [00:11:00] plethora of scientific data we have, as well as the anecdotal of what becoming elite.

very much argues with that. Like most people who, build a lot of muscle or build a lot of strength, they do a lot of work. There’s a lot of, there’s a lot of training involved in terms of just time invested, and it’s not always the case, but especially with people who are drug free, if you’re drug free, you’re just not going to build muscle.

You’re not going to optimize your muscle mass by doing very low volume. That’s not, it’s not going to happen. So you’re going to, you’re going to run it like every time you get under the bar or low intensity, 

Mike Matthews: right? 

Layne Norton: Yeah. So every time you get, every time you get under the bar, there’s a probability you can get injured.

And the more times you get into that bar, the chances it’s going to happen, go up. So yeah it’s, I was, I would say I’ve had a pretty average career injury wise in that, I’ve lifted really hard for about years and I’ve had, I think [00:12:00] four major injuries I would say. And yeah, so I would, an injury like that every three to four years, I think is pretty, pretty reasonable.

Some people would say that’s injury prone. I tend to think that it’s pretty much average. A lot of them have occurred later in my career, And part of that’s probably two things. I’m 35 I did when I was younger. And and two just because I’m at that advanced level, it takes so much work to get past that, that whenever I start doing that much work, like I have, there’s been no powerlifting meet I’ve gone into in the last five years where I didn’t have something that was bothering me, like whether it was a tight hamstring or it was a my lower back was acting up or.

My my shoulder was giving me problems or whatever it is. There was always something. So people who, I think people have this false idea that like, they’re going to go, do lift crazy heavy, go to a powerlifting meet and feel amazing. And it’s you talk to MMA [00:13:00] fighters are like, yeah, we like funny thing to get ready for a fight.

You need to fight, but when you fight, you get hurt. It’s about, I think it’s common 

Mike Matthews: among all sports, really everybody, it’s like in one of those little sports cliches, everyone plays hurt, suck it up kind of thing, yeah, 

Layne Norton: that’s exactly right.

There’s a difference between being hurt and being injured, what, like I can handle pain or nagging, inflammation, that kind of stuff. That’s all stuff you can work around, work through it. When you’re actually hurt or when you’re actually injured, that’s when it really sucks.

Mike Matthews: To that point, do you want to quickly I think we should start with some of some preventative, maybe common mistakes that, that you see people that are not as experienced as you are, that, that lead to. So they move through the hurt phase, they’re moving and they don’t address it correctly.

And then that leads to an injury as opposed to the freak injury that like, why the, where did that come from? 

Layne Norton: Yeah. You can definitely, I’ve had both, where it was like I had something on and off and I didn’t really address it. And then it became a big deal. It also had something [00:14:00] just out of left field, think the biggest thing is honestly. I think one of the biggest things people can do themselves is go see a sports specific physical therapist before they get hurt, and have them just look at your movements, because I learned so much going to my friend Jamie Alombra here in Tampa I just, there were so many things she just picked out from one session that I never even thought about, 

Mike Matthews: I had a similar experience with a guy named Rob Colawine, he’s in Clearwater, you might find him interesting. He’s 37 years, he was a professional soccer player before, super smart guy, very sharp. Same thing, just actually it was a couple months ago where he, exactly what you’re talking about, he showed, a couple structural things that were off.

that, we’re leading to, cause I tend to get tightness in the bicipital groove in my right side. And he was able to look at anyway, so there was, what I found interesting about him is he also could demonstrate it to me. He wasn’t just, he wasn’t one just going to treat the inflammation.

He was able to show me some underlying causes like, okay, look, So your collarbone doesn’t have a full range of motion. It’s supposed to be able to do this. It can’t [00:15:00] do this. Watch. So here if your collarbone, put your arm in this position, it’s supposed to be here. He’d press it down, but it’s not. And so he would say, resist my arm and I couldn’t, and it was just, it’s just weakness.

And he said, okay, look, if I depress your collarbone, if I push it down into position, it’s supposed to be in watch then now strong. And so he was able to point out a few things and then address it with just some almost like ART basically. Just digging into it uncomfortable, but it worked.

It immediately helped. So I think that’s a great tip where I wish, I would have done that really honestly probably in the beginning. And then, cause I grew up playing sports, playing ice hockey and stuff. I’ve had tightness up here. I can remember it at 15 years old. So this is something that, maybe it finally hit me now, but it could have been addressed a long time ago.

Layne Norton: Yeah, for sure. Going to Jamie. Jamie worked more with me on like movement patterns, she’s you don’t she’s like you activate your core, but you’re just activating your abdominals. You’re not [00:16:00] activating your obliques. Oh, interesting. Activate your obliques when you squat, cause that’s going to give you, side to side control.

And we worked on that. We worked on a lot of other things. Terms of hip stuff, she just changed it. Like I always had hip shift on squat. Yeah. So I would shift to the left when I would squat and she just had me like close off my stance a little bit, put my feet more forward and and do some glute activation exercises and boom, like within two weeks it was gone, and I was just like, God, like how, and I like at the time I couldn’t even squat 135 with my hip injury. I couldn’t squat 135 without an eight out of 10 pain, and I had two cortisone shots, I had high dose, like 2, 400 milligrams of ibuprofen a day, like all kinds of stuff, and nothing touched it, and just going to her for two weeks, I was able to put 135 on the bar and not have pain. Wow. Which I thought was pretty incredible. Yeah. And it was just changing the way I moved, unfortunately, people want the okay give me the pill, or give me the shot. [00:17:00] Yeah. Or, and I was guilty of that to a certain extent.

Even, we were even they thought I had bursitis, which now I’m pretty sure I didn’t have bursitis. And they were talking about oh yeah, let’s do a bursectomy and take your bursa sac out. And I started thinking, I’m like, alright, if it comes to that, okay, but I’m like, maybe I should get a second opinion before I go pulling stuff out of me.

You know what I mean? That, if that’s inflamed, yeah, it could make a difference, make me feel better, but, that’s also there for a reason, so I’d rather not take it out if I don’t have to. 

Mike Matthews: And probably I think just avoiding surgeries, if at all possible, is smart because talking about probabilities, there’s a non zero chance when you get put under that you don’t come back.

It’s a real thing. Not to be morbid, but that’s one of those things. It happens. 

Layne Norton: It happens every year. And but not even that if you look at like lower back surgeries, they have a horrible success rate, like absolutely horrible. Most people this is, I’m regurgitating this from Dr.

Stuart McGill, but I read his book called The Back Mechanic. And he said that the majority of people, if you just, [00:18:00] they don’t actually improve from back surgery. What happens is, they’re forced to take 12 weeks of not using their lower back, and then they have to do the rehabilitation work. And so they 12 weeks off, And done the rehabilitation work, they would have gotten the same outcome, and there are some cases where you need back surgery, would be like if you’ve got like some kind of, herniated disc where it’s cutting off the nerve supply and you’re risking permanent nerve damage, like that’s a big deal.

You’ve got to fix that, but yeah, like most times when people get back or like any kind of spinal surgery, it’s because I herniated two discs in my neck when I was younger playing rugby, and they were like, oh, we can do surgery, we can fuse the discs together, but the surgeon was like, it’s just gonna, you’re gonna have the same problem in a few years, like in 10, 20 years, you’ll have the same problem.

He’s try physical therapy first. And did that, and within six months I was back, yeah, it’s just. I’m not trying to say I told for example, some people are [00:19:00] like, are so against surgery that it’s insane, like I told, I remember I told my pack, like I told my pack full thickness tear inside the muscle.

And I have people saying, Oh, just get like ART or, dude, like electrical stim or whatever. I’m like, no, like the muscle’s not going to reattach that, pull itself back up to the tendon. Like that. No, that’s not how it works. That needs to be fixed. Otherwise, there’s always going to be a deformity there, but yeah, like some other things, like an ACL tear, like that’s just not going to fix itself. You have to get that fixed. Things that are inflammatory in nature, or some kind of strain or pull or whatever, a lot of times physical therapy can solve that.

And in the case of discs in your back, like I said, at least from my understanding of things, when you get a disc fusion. You’re not really solving the problem. You’re just alleviating the symptoms for a period of time and then they’re going to come back anyway. 

Mike Matthews: So what’s the point?

Yeah. 

Layne Norton: And most Americans too, from the data I’ve seen I think something like 60 percent of Americans have disc herniations after the age of 35, 60 percent have disc [00:20:00] herniations in their lower back. They’re just asymptomatic. Because if it’s not pressing on a nerve, you won’t feel it.

Mike Matthews: Yeah. Yeah. I remember reading about that because I had written an article about lower back stuff and came across that. 

Layne Norton: Yeah. Definitely would tell people like try to get physical therapy first and find someone who works with athletes. And if you can find somebody who works with specifically what you do, like Jamie, she’s a weightlifter herself, right?

So she does Olympic lifting and powerlifting. So it was nice to have somebody who. Was not going to be like, oh, we’ll just stop lifting weights, yeah, it was nice to have somebody who was Looking at from the perspective of he’s going to lift weights Whether I like it or not And so we need to get him in a place where he’s lifting weights as safely as possible and that was the same like the guy who did my pec tear surgery He was the same way like he was actually meathead, which was great.

Yeah, and he was great surgeon Man huge if you’re in the Midwest and you need any kind of orthopedic surgery You Dr. Michael Corcoran at [00:21:00] orthopedics in KKK, Illinois cannot recommend him enough for anything in the shoulder area. Like amazing. Like I don’t, you can’t even like the judges two years later, like when I was competing, they were trying to pick out which pec I had torn.

They couldn’t figure it out. They didn’t know which one it was. I just got a little tiny score scar. When it comes to that stuff, if you got to get surgery, find the best person. I realized insurance comes in and everything, but don’t just like necessarily take the first referral.

Find in your area, like who do the pro sports teams go to? Yes. Who is their best guy? You know what I mean? Like I consider going to Dr. James Andrews cause he does a lot of that stuff, yeah, you gotta find if this is really important to you, especially if your insurance covers it.

Find the best person, get the best help you can, cause there’s a reason that they’re the leaders in their field. There’s a reason the pro sports teams who print money have chosen them to do like this Michael Corcoran. He was the surgeon for the Chicago Bears. In fact, most of the pec tears he’d done previous to that were on NFL football players.

They get pec [00:22:00] tears from reaching out, trying to grab somebody and tackle. Like most, actually what you find out, most muscle tears aren’t from like tension, like the amount of weight. Like It’s from stretch, like somebody just stretches really quick and that’s what causes it to tear.

Mike Matthews: Yeah. Makes sense. Yeah. That’s how I found I’ve worked with a couple of physical therapists and that was exactly what I did. So who do I want to find? Who are the professional athletes? Who do the professional teams around here, who do they go and see for stuff? Because I figured, so I worked with one guy who, he worked with professional baseball players and also with Olympic weightlifters actually.

Layne Norton: Yeah. 

Mike Matthews: Stuff like that, where, because I know this guy has to be able to get results or they just get someone else who can, 

Layne Norton: exactly. Athletes aren’t the most patient people in the world, 

Mike Matthews: exactly. 

Layne Norton: Sports teams, sports teams, they’re trotting people out there, NFL teams who have no business being out there in the field and somehow 

Mike Matthews: they’re able to 

Layne Norton: patch them together enough to perform.

Yeah, it’s pretty incredible. 

Mike Matthews: Totally. I agree. So back to the, and so let’s look at preventative here. So what are the, some of the signs and symptoms that people, cause something I get asked [00:23:00] about is what’s the difference between just something that’s uncomfortable, but you just keep pushing and it’s that’s what you should do versus.

Okay. This is pain that is indicating that something is wrong and you shouldn’t try to push through that. It doesn’t mean you have to necessarily have to make any major changes, but it might just mean for this workout right now, there’s something going on that it would be smarter to, back off it either less weight or just try a different exercise or whatever.

Layne Norton: Yeah. If at least from my conversation with physical therapists, and again, I’m not an expert on injuries. This is just what I’ve talked about. If you have something that’s more than a 4 out of 10 pain that persists for more than a couple of weeks, you need to get it looked at, it’s not going to resolve itself on its own.

Now, if you got something that’s nagging our bicep tendonitis, like we both probably have a similar thing where mine like feels like it feels like there’s something wrong with my shoulder, but it’s actually my bicep is inflamed like that bothers me, but it’s like a two or three out of 10.

And it’s just very annoying, and it’s when I bench press. That’s exactly how 

Mike Matthews: I, 

Layne Norton: do I need [00:24:00] to stop training? Probably not, but just trying to work around it and then doing, any kind of rehab exercises to try to strengthen the area and make space in that groove. 

Mike Matthews: Yep. Yep. That’s exactly what I went through.

So I, what I, what worked well for me was sticking with dumbbells for a little bit, getting off the barbell and then doing some ART. And then also I saw this other PT that helped him with some structural, it’s like some interesting shit that. Basically, it was one part of my diaphragm wasn’t contracting.

The way that it should which then causes core instability and that actually funny enough Why that is when I was a teenager for one year I was on the computer a lot like I was in school whatever I’d play this video game at night, right? And I would sit on my chair with my right leg up and I would just have my body resting against it So the right side of my diaphragm would just always be in this can you know?

compacted position and not able to actually Yep, and from that point on I would sometimes get you know, when I would be skating and shit playing hockey I would get some Discomfort in the right side of my diaphragm and it’s always been [00:25:00] like that sense. And so I wasn’t surprised when he was like, Oh yeah, this is this part of your, and he was able to demonstrate it to me in terms of balance.

So like he would just put my feet in a position and I had just, he’s don’t let me push you over. And from this side, the side of my diaphragm just wasn’t contracting correctly. It would prevent my core from contracting correctly. And then the other side, you’d say, see, the difference here is okay.

Other side. And I was totally stable. And so for that, he like got a rubber wedge and dug into my diaphragm, which was pretty uncomfortable, but just like bringing it alive come on work. And then and that, and then that was it. And it was okay, watch. And then now in the same position, I could feel now my core contracting and stabilizing me so he couldn’t push me over.

It’s pretty wild, 

Layne Norton: isn’t 

Mike Matthews: it? I know. I know. 

Layne Norton: That’s the same thing with, Jamie just showed me some of these banded exercise where I’m thinking this isn’t going to do anything and then two weeks later I can actually squat again. It’s okay, I guess they have a doctorate in this for a reason, 

Mike Matthews: yeah. 

And I, and especially if you’re not used to it, cause you’re used to like pushing, pulling, squatting, heavyweight, and then so now you’re playing around with [00:26:00] rubber bands is what it feels like. But. 

Layne Norton: Yeah, exactly. I did like that. Like she was having me do like some stiff or some real Romanian deadlift, single leg Romanian deadlifts.

And I went to grab the 10 pound dollars and she was like, what are you doing? I’m like, what do you mean? She’s grab the 50s. She’s that’s not going to do anything for you. Okay. So I usually, when I think of PTs, I’m thinking like pink dumbbells and weird exercises. And yeah, now she actually had me like lift weights, like actually lift weights, 

Mike Matthews: that’s good. That was 

Layne Norton: good. But yeah. And 

Mike Matthews: anything else from a preventative perspective, even relating to form and technique progression and any lessons you’ve learned? 

Layne Norton: Yeah. Technique is huge, learning, especially with major exercises, learning how to engage your core properly, like your core is what protects your spine.

People, for squat and deadlift, they give the cue for you to arch your lower back while you’re arching your lower back doesn’t do anything. If you’re not bracing your core, if your core is actually what protects your spine, it’s your body’s natural belt. Learning how to do that is a huge thing.

[00:27:00] Learning how to, on pressing exercises like retracting your scapula, those sorts of things that not getting over protracted, yeah, there’s a lot of different things. And then also mobility work. Like I neglected mobility work for years and now I do quite a bit of it, cause I’m trying to make up for all those years of neglecting it.

Mike Matthews: I have a little routine as well that now I do it twice a week. 

Layne Norton: Yeah, like doing some dynamic stretching and mobility work before you train. And then if you need some static stretching, doing that after you train and just also being exposed when you train, like some days I wish I could go back and be like, dude, you don’t have it today.

Take 5 percent off and just get your volume in and then get out, but unfortunately that, but it is that mentality that makes you really good at something. The push, push, it also gets you in trouble. But if you don’t have that mentality, maybe you never get to that level. So it’s a tough, it is a really tough balancing act, because you’re 

Mike Matthews: wondering, is this, am I just, is this a psychological, am I tricking myself or am I actually, in a [00:28:00] sense, understanding my body and just sensing there’s, this is, this doesn’t feel right and I should just back off.

It can be hard to know. 

Layne Norton: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. That’s. It’s a very fine line and there’s usually not a defined year to tell you what to do. So I do think in the future we’re going to have more metrics to where we can tell like a, like bar velocity devices, for example you can tell, Oh, that’s 80 percent of your max, but that only moved at a 0.

2. Meters per second, or usually it moves 0. 28. Like you don’t have it today. Let’s back off a little bit, like some objective markers, as opposed to just like a perspective perceptive, like RPE scale, those sorts of things. Although RPE can be really useful. I really like objective measurements because for example, like me, I’m such a slow, like grinding squatter, for example, I will always perceive a high level of effort, even on something that’s relatively light, using the RPE scale for me is [00:29:00] very difficult because if I do an eight RPE feels really heavy to me Yeah whereas other people are like, oh, yeah eight RPE. No big deal. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. 

Layne Norton: I’m like, man, that’s It’s eight RPEs really hard, so I have the 

Mike Matthews: same thing with squatting in particular.

I’m not, I’ve never been nearly as strong as you are but I’ve run into the same thing where even going through warmups and stuff where I just by RPE, I’m thinking like, this is going to suck when I start adding weight, but actually it plays out fine and I’m able to do exactly what I want it to do.

It just felt like it was going to, it’s way fucking harder than. The RP seemed disproportionately high for what I was actually capable of doing that day. 

Layne Norton: Oh, absolutely, yeah. Like I said, that’s pretty much me every day. I was, we actually had to borrow the Velocity device one day, and I was like, Compared to other lifters who were much lower than me in terms of skill level or strength.

All of them were squatting [00:30:00] 135, 225, 315 faster than I was, yeah, even up to 350, they were all still faster than me. It wasn’t until it got to 405, 450, that sort of thing. Like basically to where they couldn’t do it anymore before I was faster than them, you know So yeah, like I always perceived that high level of effort 

Mike Matthews: You think that’s just technique or you think it’s just more anatomy for you how biomechanics?

I 

Layne Norton: think probably a little biomechanics more so just because I’m so long my legs are so long that I have such a long Squat stroke like if you look at How far the bar actually has to travel for me to get to parallel versus other people. It’s disgusting 

Mike Matthews: I know the same long femurs is have fun. Have fun squatting.

Also. I have long arms. Have fun pressing 

Layne Norton: Oh, yeah, good. Don’t have to though. Yeah. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, that’s the been my best 

Layne Norton: That’s all I got I always say powerlifting is pretty fair because if you got one thing usually you got sure something else is better like it’s true But that’s why the best powerlifters are you know?

[00:31:00] Relatively short femur Pretty long shin long arms for deadlifting, but long proportionally in the forearm, and very short in the upper arm, because the upper arm is the part you have to clear for bench press. If you’ve ever seen Ed Cohn, who’s one of the, if not the greatest pilot of all time, he looks like he has gorilla forearms.

They look Stupid they’re so long like his hands hang down by his knees, but his biceps 

Mike Matthews: and Yes, 

Layne Norton: yeah, like his upper arm is very he actually looks really weird if you see me. I love ed Coney’s super sweet guy. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, 

Layne Norton: but he looks really weird if you see him in person, because he’s got these Super long arms, but they’re all from here down, you know 

Mike Matthews: Just built for weight lifting.

Some 

Layne Norton: that’s like He did have a little bit longer femur than probably your optimal squatter, but he was just his lower back was just so damn strong. It didn’t matter, so yeah, it’s definitely it’s interesting to see who the best lifters are. Like Christophe, he’s Becky.

I may be saying his name wrong, but he’s the hundred, the current 231 pound IPF world [00:32:00] record holder. Like he, I think he deadlifted something like, 865 at 231, drug free. And if you look where his lockout is barely above his knees, like it barely has to clear his needs.

And then he’s still, but he’s still bench presses like in the mid fours, it’s pretty insane. That 

Mike Matthews: is 

Layne Norton: insane. 

Mike Matthews: What about related, things related to recovery? Cause there’s also, there’s a lot of talk and a lot of speculation on just overtraining and what is it? What is overtraining even?

Is it even real? Blah, blah, blah. We don’t have to dive into that per se. But I think recovery is something that’s a bit more it’s a bit easier to talk about. And there are definitely symptoms. And I know this just from talking with people that symptoms of where they’re not like they deloaded in a while.

There’s a point where we all get there. If you push yourself, there are things you can objectively it is subjective, but it’s pretty obvious. You can go cool. This is what I’m, even if you’re not looking at heart rate variability, if you’re not getting fancy about it. Point that point where you’re like, I’m no longer, I need to, I need to take break.

I need to, take a week [00:33:00] off or do you load for a week or, I’m just not recovering. Maybe it’s not sleeping enough. The reason why it could be something else, but anything to add on that in terms of just symptoms of under recovering, 

Layne Norton: I think if you’re always having high RPs, very high rate of perceived effort even with weights that you should be relatively easy.

I think if you’re getting some decrements in strength. Even though your training volume is high, if you’re like soreness that just rolls from one workout into another, it doesn’t seem to have any kind of catch up. If you’re feeling worn down constantly, but it, all those are very subjective, like there was a, somebody posted something the other day, they were like, do you feel like your physique looks better in the morning?

Do you get tired in the mid afternoon? You feel like you’re dragging through the day, this and that. And then Bobbin said, good, you’re normal. Like that, like you should feel that way. That’s how most people feel. It doesn’t mean you have adrenal fatigue or all these other, things [00:34:00] that people make up.

Yeah. So yeah cause at a certain point I had somebody like, Oh yeah, I’ve just been training really hard and I’m tired all the time. This and that. I’m like couldn’t you just be tired all the time because you’re training really hard? Yeah. Is that ever crossed your mind? So it’s, people say, Oh, when you exercise, you have so much energy.

And it’s yeah, I think if you like recreationally exercising, I think the keyword there is 

Mike Matthews: exercise. Yeah, sure. Yeah. 

Layne Norton: You’re not like doing like a 12 week overreaching. Yeah. Training. There’s a difference between exercise and training, yeah. Yeah, when you’re doing like a 12 week overreaching powerlifting cycle, like you are going to feel like garbage by the end.

Like it’s going to suck. Like I remember three weeks out from raw nationals in 2014, I was supposed to go in and do deadlift singles with six 60 and my best pull is seven Oh five. So really it’s going to be difficult, but it shouldn’t be that bad. And it was like the most awful experience I’ve ever had in the gym.

Like it was taking me. Like five seconds for the bar to break the floor, like it was just yeah I was [00:35:00] just I was taking me like 15 minutes in between each single because I was just like having to be Like come on, it was just so terrible feeling, but then I got to the meat I did great, cuz you taper like when you and that’s the point is like Overreaching is different than overtraining.

Overtraining is a chronic condition. 

Mike Matthews: As far as I know, it’s hard to really do. It’s really 

Layne Norton: hard. Most people who lift weights are not going to get there because it’s people who do that are like triathletes and people who just train with enormous amounts of training volume. Us weightlifters like to think we’re tough, but at the end of the day, like you’re in the gym, right?

An hour, two hours, three hours. 

Mike Matthews: Resting, half the time is resting. Yeah, more 

Layne Norton: than half the time is resting. These guys are training like all day. You know what I mean? And yeah, it’s just, I think, and the notion that you can over train to the point where you have like, where it causes you to lose muscle mass.

That’s just never been shown. Like it’s just never been shown, never been demonstrated. [00:36:00] I think you can start to see performance decrements where your strength goes down in the short term. But like I said, if you, for powerlifting we, we like purposely do that, we like purposely over train or overreach.

And then a week away from the meet we taper and we super compensate and you get a, like a, it’s like a rubber band effect. It’s just understanding the differences between I feel bad. I feel a little bad versus just chronically being beaten down. 

Mike Matthews: And to that point, just to everybody listening, in terms of deloading and frequency and so forth, it depends how you’re training.

But if you’re training like if you’re on a strength program of, or at least that may be a hybrid program. Me personally, I find that if I deload every six to eight weeks I, That keeps me sometimes. I, some I find I probably could go longer, but that’s what I do personally. And I never run into, sometimes by that sixth or eighth week, I’m noticing like what you’re talking about lane, where the, what I notice is that the weight that I normally would be, what I’m trying to, what I’m working with starts to feel very heavy.

That’s one of the first things that I [00:37:00] notice and abnormally so and so everybody listening, that’s what I do personally. Every 68 weeks, I try to preempt it a little bit. I just find that. For my body, that tends to work well and that keeps me progressing and I don’t really fight. I don’t dig myself into a hole if I do that.

Layne Norton: Yeah I mean I’m, I probably pushed it a little bit past where I should, but that’s, I’m looking, I compete in powerlifting and whatnot. That’s, yeah. I’m 

Mike Matthews: just an Instagram model. I’m not a real. Yeah. If you’re 

Layne Norton: just looking to get stronger and not do that, then you probably, you’re probably better off preemptively doing it cause it reduces your injury risk, so when you’re sore and you’re tight and you can’t move as well, cause you’re a little overreached, like that’s when that’s better or a worse chance for an injury to occur. 

Mike Matthews: Okay, good. So I think that’s I think it was a major points, but, For, in terms of preventative, is there anything else that I didn’t think of or that you feel it should be touched on?

Layne Norton: Not really, just, pay attention. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. 

Layne Norton: Okay, good. Don’t try to say, oh, that probably won’t matter. It’s probably going [00:38:00] to matter. 

Mike Matthews: Hey, quickly, before we carry on, if you are liking my podcast, would you please help spread the word about it? Because no amount of marketing or advertising gimmicks can match the power of word of mouth.

So if you are enjoying this episode and you think of someone else who might enjoy it as well. Please do tell them about it. It really helps me. And if you are going to post about it on social media, definitely tag me so I can say thank you. You can find me on Instagram at muscleforlifefitness, Twitter at muscleforlife, and Facebook at muscleforlifefitness.

Okay. So now let’s shift gears to, and this is where some of, what you’ve been dealing with in the last year and a half or so it’s going to be very relevant. So an injury has occurred and this isn’t discomfort. This is an actual injury. How have you gone about working [00:39:00] around it? And even, I, I just know, again, from talking to people, even getting, just having it explained that, It’s one that it’s not just because you got hurt doesn’t, again, like you were saying, if we look at it statistically if you do this for long enough, something is going to happen.

You don’t have to go in the gym every day thinking about it, but just, don’t the point is it doesn’t necessarily mean that you were being stupid or doing anything particularly wrong. Sometimes shit just happens. Exactly. So there’s the don’t get down on yourself of Oh, I fucked this up.

And it’s just cause I’m bad at this or whatever. So there’s that is encouraging just to know, okay, so this happened and shouldn’t be particularly surprised that this happened. Maybe even you could have done something to prevent it from happening. Okay, fine. But now going from here, you talked a bit about what has helped in terms of seeing a good.

Sports doctor, which I think is great advice. But now in the gym, how have you how have you worked around some of the injuries that you’ve run into? And are there any kind of like general lessons that can be 

Layne Norton: I try to look for exercises that I can substitute that are [00:40:00] close that will allow me to maintain more of my adaptation, more of my strength, more my muscle.

And how has that 

Mike Matthews: played out specifically? Cause what, so you’ve had, you’ve run into some hip issues. Some lower back and some 

Layne Norton: cervical spine. Yeah. 

Mike Matthews: Okay. 

Layne Norton: So for me the squatting in particular when I was getting ready for worlds in 2015, like 12 weeks out, I really started having some lower back issues and I kept trying to work through them, kept trying to work through them and just got to the point where I just couldn’t work through them anymore.

I decided to take three weeks off of squats and I just did leg press, cause leg press did not aggravate my lower back injury. Was leg press as good as squats? No. But it was better than doing nothing. I did leg press for three weeks with the same or similar volume and intensity as I would on squatting, and when I went back to squatting, yes, I was weaker, but I hadn’t lost that much.

By substituting that exercise, I was able to keep more of my adaptation but my rule is if there’s any pain, you After like an actual acute injury if I try to substitute something and there’s any pain, I don’t do it. 

Mike Matthews: [00:41:00] Find it, 

Layne Norton: find something. You 

Mike Matthews: want something that just feels good.

That’s what you’re looking for. 

Layne Norton: I tore my pec it repaired and everything. You better believe I wasn’t in there being like, Oh, I can probably do some pec flies or whatever. No way. Like I didn’t even, you baby that thing, but yeah, like the hip injury, like I tried to keep squatting and it was just any hip movement at all, like press, whatever.

It didn’t matter. That just hurt. The only thing that didn’t hurt was leg extensions and leg curls. So I did leg extensions and leg curls. I was 

Mike Matthews: going to ask on that for the squatting. Did you also add some hamstring stuff in that didn’t bother you? 

Layne Norton: Yeah. And then like glute ham raises, those sorts of things, I did a lot of good mornings, cause that’s a little bit, if you talk to the internet, that’s why I do anywhere for squats.

That’s because 

Mike Matthews: you, cause you, you’re low bar. 

Layne Norton: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, same. 

Mike Matthews: No, I know. That’s just what’s comfortable to me. I don’t know. So I’ve had people like, Oh, what the fuck? Why are you? Why are you so hunched over? Look at my shoulders and my hips. They’re rising at the same.

That’s just how I squat. I’m fucking tall and I had the bar low. What do you want from me? 

Layne Norton: Yeah. Like that’s the thing. Like people say, why don’t you high bar squat? Cause you can be more upright. I always have to lean forward. [00:42:00] If I high bar squat because now my fulcrum is longer, like I just fold over and I just completely fold.

That’s exactly 

Mike Matthews: what happens to me. 

Layne Norton: Yeah, so if low bar squat just by moving it down a few inches. Yeah, I start out more forward But I’m able to maintain that position, it’s just much more comfortable for me And people I always say, I’m unaware of any good morning where the hips go below the knees But if you ever find one, let me know, so But yeah, it’s it’s You know, that’s another thing is finding the technique that works for you.

I injured my lower back much more often when I was high bar squatting, and then when I went to low bar it was much better. I was able to lift more weight. Yeah, finding technique that works for you and understanding that, you’re an individual, your body type in terms of your structure as an individual and you should try to find what is most comfortable, and that goes right down to Transcribed The shoes you wear, the belt you wear, if you wear a belt, whatever it is, find what you’re most comfortable in.

Mike Matthews: Yep. Yep. That’s a good point. I found that squat shoes makes quite a difference for me. 

Layne Norton: Huge difference. 

Mike Matthews: It just, it makes [00:43:00] it, yeah. I can, I’m immediately, I don’t know, 10 percent stronger just cause I feel so much more stable. And I was surprised when I first made that switch, I was like, wow, I would not have expected that actually.

Layne Norton: Yeah. What kind do you 

Mike Matthews: use? Adidas. Just Adipowers. Adipowers. 

Layne Norton: Yeah, the out of powers. Yeah. So a little bit more aggressive heel, but yeah, those like your feet feel like you’re pouring the concrete, like just so stable and you can 

Mike Matthews: really torque and dig them into the ground. I like it. 

Layne Norton: Oh yeah. And if you, if people are out there, I’ve never squatted in an actual pair of shoes that’s meant for squatting and you do it, you just be.

Absolutely blown away by the difference. 

Mike Matthews: Yep. 

Layne Norton: We’ll never squat anything else again. 

Mike Matthews: Yep. Exactly. I was sold. I was like I’m never squatting in anything else other than this. 

Layne Norton: Yeah. I had a really interesting debate with Joe Donnelly on Twitter and we actually used to get along, but he said I’m an athlete.

I squat in, my sneakers or whatever. And I said, okay, you played NFL football. Did you play NFL football in sneakers? He didn’t really have a, didn’t really have a comeback to that, 

Mike Matthews: no, you played in the shoes that are good for [00:44:00] football. 

Layne Norton: Exactly. You’re going to play in spikes because you’ve got more control and that’s what makes sense for football.

You’re not playing in sneakers, right? Yeah. Same thing for lifting weights. Like, why would I not use the foot attire that is most. 

Mike Matthews: It’s suitable to what you’re doing. It’s I wouldn’t 

Layne Norton: play basketball in my squat shoes. I wouldn’t do that. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. 

Layne Norton: But yeah but I would squat them.

So 

Mike Matthews: at regarding form also one thing just, or not form, but finding what works best for you. I think if you want to just quickly talk about just as a quick aside, deadlifting, cause I guess, I don’t know why sumo deadlifting has become like a thing. Like everybody, it’s you’re cool if you’re super sumo deadlifting and you’re somehow like, you’re just not really you’re not up to speed if you’re just it’s 

Layne Norton: funny because for a while there, everybody said Sumo was cheating.

Yeah. You’d be like, oh you do cheater Sumo, 

Mike Matthews: I think, I don’t know, maybe my guess is you have some of these random Instagram, YouTube people, a few of them, I think. Sumo and it became a thing, that sumo is the it does 

Layne Norton: look cooler when you approach the bar and it looks more badass.

Yeah, and you’re all like Yeah, exactly. But no, some people are going to be better conventional pullers and some people are going to be better [00:45:00] sumo pullers and that’s You know, the people that say sumo is cheating because it’s a shorter range of motion. If sumo was inherently easier, every person at a powerlifting meet would pull sumo.

Nobody is going to handicap themselves. That is just not going to happen. Benedict Magnusson did not pull conventional and pull a thousand 15 pounds because he was like, Oh, I want to show how much even more badass I am by pulling conventional. No, it’s because he was stronger that way.

And that kind of 

Mike Matthews: just comes down again to how your body’s built, right? 

Layne Norton: Yeah. Yeah. If you, and what muscles of yours are stronger, if you’re more posterior chain dominant and the, and you’re longer arm than probably conventional is going to be something that’s good for you.

If you’re. A little more quad dominant, quad and hip and and a little bit shorter arms. You’re probably better at sumo. Yeah. I, like me personally, I’m about the same at both. Like I’ve pulled a 700 conventional and I, my best pull a sumo in the gym was 715. So you know, I’m about the same.

Mike Matthews: What do [00:46:00] you prefer? 

Layne Norton: I prefer sumo just because it’s my lower back is a little more upright. Okay. And I tend to not have as many soft tissue injuries with sumo as I do with conventional. But, again, it’s not that one’s better than the other. They both have advantages and disadvantages.

If you were going to do a standing high jump, you wouldn’t spread your legs as wide as possible and then try to jump, right? You would put both feet under you and you would jump. When you’re in a conventional position with both feet under you, you have much more power you can generate. Suit, but you have to pull the bar further.

Yes sumo. It’s a shorter range of motion, but you have much less power Yeah, so it just depends on what is Try both figure out what works better for you. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. Yeah that’s been my advice people is find what’s most comfortable and what are you strong is that if you do better at?

One or the other and it feels good then just do that 

Layne Norton: Exactly. 

Mike Matthews: Okay. So back to, you mentioned when you had the hip issue. So I assume that meant no deadlifting for some period of time as well and you were working around that or? 

Layne Norton: I actually was able to deadlift most of the time.

Sumo was a little uncomfortable, [00:47:00] but I was able to conventional deadlift with pretty much no pain. I did have one day where like it acted up on me, but other than that, like pretty much no pain for conventional. So I did a lot of actual conventional deadlifting during that time. 

Mike Matthews: I see. And if you had to, if you would have had to.

Drop, pulling from your routine, how would you, and this is something I get asked fairly frequently because it’s, there’s not some simple sure, if you can go from a squat to a leg press and like you were saying it’ll do a pretty good job maintaining things, but it’s there. It’s not as easy with deadlifting.

It’s not just oh yeah, just go do this one. 

Layne Norton: I would say probably like a barbell hip thrust and then some kind of direct low back work in terms of a good morning. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, you’re gonna get, you’re gonna get pretty close. With a hip injury you could do a good boarding, and you could probably do a hip thrust.

Yeah those would be, you’d be getting activating quite a few of the same muscles, because it’s basically the same movement cut in two, yeah. But but yeah, obviously like the best thing is if you can deadlift, but that’s not always a possible. 

Mike Matthews: Yep. Yep. Okay. So then you had [00:48:00] run into some issues with pressing as well.

Is that related to your neck or is that related more to the biceps tendonitis and so forth? 

Layne Norton: Both, but like my neck, so I’ve had this injury for probably 15 years and it’s mostly due to, Like it acts up when I sleep on it wrong, like I’ll wake up the next day and I’ll feel my right trap Just get really tight.

Like it’s still really you can see me like digging on this chair. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah 

We’re it’s like psychosomatic like we’re triggering all your Something talk about your shit. I’ll get that to you sometimes like my neck feels tight now 

Layne Norton: Yeah, exactly. So But yeah, so Two herniated discs and just I sleep on it wrong Get them a little out of position.

They hit that nerve. Yeah. Like my right trap gets crazy tight and then I’ll just lose strength on this side. Like over the course of about six weeks, I’ll usually lose like 25 30 percent of my strength on this side. And then over the next six to 12 weeks at all, come back has been the trend before. So I’m hoping I’m getting about four weeks into this current [00:49:00] aggravation and I’m hoping it’s going to start getting better at some point because right now Cause I was starting to look at meets again and now it’s acting up, but it is what it is.

Mike Matthews: So if you’re not able to bench press I mean there’s an obvious alternative of dumbbell pressing is, has that, what have you done to work around? Okay, I gotta, I have to get off the bench for X period of time. Here’s what I’m going to do. Yeah, I still do 

Layne Norton: a little bit of bench just because it doesn’t, it seems to be the sleep that aggravates it, not the bench press, but.

I’ll I’ll do more dumbbells, but I’ll do a lot of flies actually, cause flies. So it’s the C6, C7 disc, which is to your right tricep. And so like it’s my tricep that’s actually weak. And so if I take the tricep out of it, like flies, there’s almost no difference in strength. So I’ll do a lot of flies.

Mike Matthews: How do you like to do you like dumbbell flies or do you like like cable flies, low, high, mid? And do you like, and then do you, where do you like in terms of position? Do you like low, do you like medium, high, 

Layne Norton: usually medium or high. Okay. Yeah. And I’ll just like my gym’s old school. It only has the high one.

So I [00:50:00] just bend over a little more and get the angle that way. Yeah. Yeah. Cause that’s going to be. It’s not obviously a press, but it’s something, you can maintain your hypertrophy and then hopefully when you come back, it’s more of just a neural adaptation of getting to learn the movement again.

Mike Matthews: Yeah. Yep. Okay. Great. I think we’ve covered a lot. Is there, are there any other tips that you would share for getting through injuries? In terms of, it can be changing your training or even treatment options that have helped for you. 

Layne Norton: I’d say, like I said, biggest thing I can say is find a physical therapist and work with them before you get injured, identify the movement patterns that are predisposing you to injury before you get injured.

And I’ll say this, but nobody will do it, because nobody wants to spend the money. But. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. So I’ll 

Mike Matthews: second that. It’s money well spent and I wish I would have worked with this guy. It sounds like you the lady that you worked with is also, is even a bit different, which is cool looking at movement patterns.

So 

Layne Norton: [00:51:00] yeah, 

Mike Matthews: I’ll second that. It’s not, I think I, I maybe spent a few hundred dollars max with this guy and it helped and I would still be going. He’s in Florida. I’m in Virginia. I’d still be going. I’d see him every week until it wouldn’t have to be forever, I was able, I was only able to get in a few sessions with him and it actually helped markedly.

And he gave me a little mobility routine to do that. I do now. And I agree that, I think this is, I would like to see this It’s just mobility becoming more popular, but because the problem right now is, okay, so if you want to, if you want to dive into it, you’re probably going to end up with a, becoming a supple leopard.

And if, but if you’re like most people, you’re going to jump into that book and you’re going to get confused really quickly. There’s a lot of, a lot of jargon and it doesn’t really, it’s just like an encyclopedia. So it doesn’t have a prescriptive. Okay, Mr. John or Jane Doe, you’re starting weightlifting here.

Layne Norton: Yeah. 

Mike Matthews: You know what I mean? 

Layne Norton: Yeah. And it’s hard because it is, it’s very individual, but that’s why I liked the back mechanic. It gives you, okay here’s some diagnostic [00:52:00] tests you can do on yourself to try and figure out what’s going on. Yeah. And then if you have x, Here’s these exercises to do if you have why here’s these exercises seem to have made a pretty big difference for me.

Mike Matthews: Yep. And I’m an author out there. I think for with mobility stuff too, you’ll know you’ve hit on something when you see, you should see pretty rapid improvements. This is, I’m just, this is me just regurgitating what the physical therapists I’ve worked with have said that, within two or three weeks you should notice a significant improvement if you hit on, if you’ve hit on the right thing.

Layne Norton: Absolutely. That’s been my experience for sure. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. So it’s not something that Oh you’re just gonna have to grind away for four months and then maybe it’ll be a little bit better. No, not at all. 

Layne Norton: Yeah. Exactly. That’s within a few weeks if you’re not seeing some improvement, then they’re looking in the wrong spot.

Mike Matthews: Totally. Okay, great. Yeah. I think that’s a pretty comprehensive discussion. Let’s end off with, tell us a bit about, so in your, what do you have? You’re big push right now is avatar nutrition, right? Yup. Yup. Do you want to tell everybody what that is? 

Layne Norton: Yeah. I’ve done [00:53:00] coaching for years and years.

I was an online coach before everybody on Instagram was an online coach. Literally 

Mike Matthews: everybody. 

Layne Norton: Yeah. Literally everybody. Did a show, got third. Here’s my online coaching plans. 

Mike Matthews: Chicken, oatmeal, and and maybe, and then if you want to get really shredded tilapia and asparagus. Yeah. 

Layne Norton: So I but what you learn is when you coach one on one that there’s only so many people you can get to it per unit time.

Sure. Like. When I was just doing coaching, that was a hundred percent of my business. The most people I can handle at any one time was around with just under a hundred, a lot of people, it was a lot of people, a lot of people. And that was spreading the updates out over seven days and all that kind of stuff.

And I enjoyed it, but it was all my time, and it’s like, all right, it’s very hard to make a difference in the world. If you’re only working with a hundred people at a time, but I wrote articles and I put all this stuff out there, but. I had the opportunity to basically this guy Mark Springer came to me with this idea.

He said, why can’t we automate your coaching? Why can’t we basically take what you do and put it into a computer system that can predict things and [00:54:00] make changes? And I’m like, I don’t know how you do that without the human element, but we basically like, so we have like now, like the original logic was like two pages long and now we have something like 50 pages of equations and logic to basically like.

Any scenario you can imagine that’s come, they can come up in coaching, we’ve pretty much tried to account for it. And can you 

Mike Matthews: tell us a bit more about that? So this is specifically on the diet side of things, right? 

Layne Norton: Yeah. So basically if you went to avatar, what would happen is you put in your information, height, weight, sex, your body type, even though that’s a little bit your body 

Mike Matthews: represents body composition, I’m assuming.

Layne Norton: Yeah. Yeah. Your, exactly. Your body fat. There’s a lot of, there’s probably about a dozen different metrics you’re putting in. And then you, it will generate custom macronutrient recommendations for you. Based on your goal, right? And so now we have four different goals you can select from.

Fat loss, muscle gain, reverse dieting, and maintenance. And each, except for maintenance. Maintenance, the way maintenance works is there’s a tolerable range. So that’s how [00:55:00] maintenance works and it will lower or raise your calories depending on how you’re fluctuating. Like within reverse dieting, muscle gain fat loss, there’s four different levels for every goal, right?

So you have, slow fat loss, moderate, Fast extreme, and we try to steer people away from the extreme but yeah, 

Mike Matthews: it can be applicable if someone’s very overweight probably, right? Like they need to cut their body fat percentage in half just to even get in the gym 

Layne Norton: and we try to give like a tutorial in that, like it says, okay, this is, it’s targeting this much weight loss per week and this is what we recommend, like those sorts of things.

But yeah it’s even gotten down to, but like really where the true value is. It’s not like it’s a macro calculator. Yes, but there’s plenty of those out there, but it’s adaptive to you. So if it found like, let’s say it prescribed you, like what are your maintenance calories, Mike?

Would you say? 

Mike Matthews: About 2, 800 is mine. So 

Layne Norton: You’re pretty average. I would say maybe a little bit above average for your weight. But let’s say the system predicted that, Oh your maintenance calories are 2, 200 based on the information. Now, if you know your maintenance calories, there’s an option to put them in and [00:56:00] it will override some of the other data that you’ve entered.

But if you didn’t know, but it was 2, 800 and the system predicted 2, 200 for whatever reason, you probably lose a lot of weight your first week and then it would be smart 

Mike Matthews: and be like, okay, that was not right. Obviously. 

Layne Norton: What happened at first, when we first came out with it was. We would have two bigger fluctuations in numbers, right?

Because it’d be, it would be like, Oh the first week it was targeting 1. 5 pounds of fat loss, but they lost three pounds. So obviously they’re under eating by 750 calories per day. That pound and a half, that could have been water. That could have been a lot of stuff. So we’ve put in so many constraints on it that it smoothed out a lot of the big fluctuate because like muscle gain, for example, if you’re on a slow muscle gain, like a conservative muscle gain, trying to limit body fat.

You might be targeting like a one pound gain per month, but within that month, like each week it might be, look, something like went up two pounds, went down a pound and a half, went up another two pounds, went down a pound and a [00:57:00] half. And so if the system was responding so much, like you just ended up chasing your tail, right?

So we had to put Also it would 

Mike Matthews: make meal planning tough and 

Layne Norton: Yeah. So we constantly 

Mike Matthews: reworking and remeasuring food and stuff. Exactly. 

Layne Norton: So we put a lot of constraints on the system, especially in that first week where a lot of fluctuations can happen, it does that. But even for example we spent three weeks coming up with a logic for the menstrual cycle for females, because like we, we had to make it so that when women gained weight on fat loss, because the menstrual cycle that we could account for that, there’s a lot.

A lot of different things, but it works really well. I’m using it right now and I document my progress on it and I’ll even before I enter my update in the avatar, I’ll say, okay, as a coach, I think I would do this in this situation. And pretty much every time it’s done exactly what I said it was going to do.

So it’s pretty cool to see that. And at 10 a month, it’s a pretty, pretty good steal. It’s a lot less than the coach. Some 

Mike Matthews: people, I’ve seen people charging anywhere from, I don’t know, 40 to [00:58:00] 80 just to give someone macros, which I think is ridiculous. 

Layne Norton: Yeah, 

Mike Matthews: Just here are your macros.

There’s this calculator. You can do that yourself. You don’t need to pay 50 for a one time. Oh, here are macros. 

Layne Norton: We have some companies that kind of do what we do that are free apps and that sort of thing. But. Again, what I tell people is I’m like, okay, I didn’t write the algorithm, like not that it was, my partner’s Katie Cole is one of my partners. She’s a master’s in nutrition and a registered dietitian. So you’ve got two people with a really heavy science background as well as a coaching background, working on this thing and trying to optimize it. So it’s a big difference, and like anybody, that’s what 

Mike Matthews: I’m saying.

It’s a lot more than just, Hey, here are macros. 

Layne Norton: So one time as well, 

Mike Matthews: where you go from here is up to you, 

Layne Norton: totally. So the adjustments make a big difference. We have a Facebook page that’s, huge for support. We have full time customer support staff. So we have four full time customer support or member success people is what we call them.

Dan, my my marketing guy would get on my ass about calling them customer support. If you found that out. Yeah. We over here, 

Mike Matthews: it’s customer [00:59:00] experience. 

Layne Norton: Yeah, so member success, we call them, and so we’re really, yeah, we’re really we’re doing great. We have thousands and thousands of members and we’re, like I said, I, there’ll always be a place for personalized coaching because some people just want that one on one experience, and to have somebody who has that nuance to, and just the individual support, yeah. But And then 

Mike Matthews: also you can obviously dive more into the nutritional side of things as well if you’re working one on one in terms of optimizing, not just macro, but micronutrition as well. Where, okay, that’s great that the macros are where they need to be, but how are you getting these calories and could that be improved 

Layne Norton: yeah. So we have plans to do a lot of stuff with the system. We’re actually right now in the process of. Redesigning a lot of it and building it back up from the ground floor. But yeah, it’s, I think it’s something that, like our goal is to actually help good coaches. Like we want to build a coaching platform as well.

But we won’t put the bad ones out of business. And like I said, a 10 a month, it’s really It’s a really great option for people who don’t have hundreds of dollars to spend on like a high level coach every month 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, an app is probably a pretty [01:00:00] obvious Yeah, 

Layne Norton: we’re definitely like we’re gonna do apps like that’s being worked on He had it’s a long story, but we had two companies screw us out of a lot of money not do the work Oh and apps 

Mike Matthews: in particular.

Layne Norton: Yeah. Yeah and web development I don’t know how what your experience with web development is, but my experience Most web developers are scammers. They’re really bad. 

Mike Matthews: No, it can be, it can be bad. I can share a few things when we’re done that might help, but I’ve gone through some of that shit myself as well.

Layne Norton: What we did was we just ended up hiring our own team. And had them on staff. And that’s made a huge difference. We’ve had two guys that have gotten through way more, because they’re invested. They’re part of the company. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. 

Layne Norton: It’s not some, it’s not some I don’t know.

Mike Matthews: Essentially, it’s your CTO. It’s not just like some dude and, it doesn’t really give a fuck. 

Layne Norton: Exactly. And that’s what it was. It’s people who just didn’t give a fuck. They like they stole probably God, I didn’t want to say it, but 200, 000 of our money, if not more. And they charge us for hours.

They never even worked, and then when we went, I don’t mind saying the names either [01:01:00] type two designs in Tampa, fuck you guys. And I can say that because they’re getting sued by four companies currently. So the really bad side is that we’re our money back because, even if we sued them, like we’re not going to get paid, like we’re fifth in line.

Yeah, but we just were like Frank Sinatra quote best revenge is massive success. So let’s just succeed massively. Yeah, so that’s what we’re trying to do. 

Mike Matthews: Cool And so I assume the URL is avatarnutrition. com. Yep. You got it. Okay, great way. I highly recommend everybody go check it out again It’s I like that.

I like there’s an ongoing element to it’s because like you said plenty of macro calculators out there, but They end right there. And then if you want to hire someone to do what, lanes software does, it’s going to be a lot more than 10 a month. 

Layne Norton: Exactly. 

Mike Matthews: Okay. Awesome. Anything else lane that you want to let everybody know any other, any upcoming projects or is that pretty much that’s your, 

Layne Norton: I also have a member.

I have a member site as well, like on Biolane, which is more completely like educational stuff. I do a webinar every month, it’s 15 bucks a [01:02:00] month. Yeah. What you get for doing a webinar every month would be worth that in and of itself, but we also have articles, we have videos, we have we have like video series of my, my, my comeback and my work and yeah, it’s a pretty cool deal.

It’s a nice compliment. It’s not a coaching thing, but it’s it’s for people who are a little bit more advanced and really want that next level of knowledge. 

Mike Matthews: Okay. And that’s biolane. com, right? 

Layne Norton: But we do have free articles on there as well. 

Mike Matthews: Cool. Okay. All right. Great. That’s everything.

I, then again, I thank you for taking the time. I really appreciate it. I think people are going to appreciate the discussion. It touches on a lot of things I get asked about a lot. So that’s why I thought it’d be worth getting you on the podcast to go over it. 

Layne Norton: Absolutely. I appreciate it, man.

Thank you so much. 

Mike Matthews: Absolutely. Hey, it’s Mike again. Hope you liked the podcast. If you did go ahead and subscribe. I put out new episodes every week or two where I talk about all kinds of things related to health and fitness and general wellness. Also head over to my website at www dot muscle for life.

com, where you’ll find not only past episodes of the podcast, [01:03:00] but you’ll also find a bunch of different articles that I’ve written. I release a new one almost every day. Actually, I release four to six new articles a week. And I also have a podcast. And you can also find my books and everything else that I’m involved in over at muscleforlife.

com. Alright, thanks again. Bye.