311: Kyle Dobbs on “Macro-to-Micro” Thinking in Strength, Speed and Corrective Exercise

Today’s episode features Kyle Dobbs. Kyle is the owner and founder of Compound Performance which offers online training, facility consulting and a personal trainer mentorship. He has an extensive biomechanics and human movement background (having trained 15,000+ sessions), and has been a two time previous guest on this podcast. In the world of training and performance, it’s easy to get caught up in prescribing a lot of exercises that offer a relatively low training effect in the grand scheme of things. Healthy and capable athletes are often assigned a substantial load of low-level “prehab” style and corrective exercises that they often do not need. In doing so, both a level of boredom, fatigue and just simply wasting time, happens in the scope of a program. For my own training journey, I’ve seen my own pendulum swing from a relatively minimal approach to the number of movements, to having a great deal of training exercises, back down to a smaller and more manageable core of training movements in a session. As I’ve learned to tweak and adjust the big lifts, and even plyometric and sprint variations, I realize that I can often check off a lot of training boxes with these movements, without needing to regress things too far. On the show today, Kyle will speak on where and when we tend to get overly complex, or overly regressive in our training and programming. He’ll talk about what he prioritizes when it comes to assigning training for clients, as well as a “macro-to-micro” way of thinking in looking at the entirety of training. Kyle will get into specifics on what this style of thinking and prioritization means for things like the big lifts, speed training, and core work, as well as touch how on biomechanical differences such as infra-sternal angle play a role in his programming. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs. For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to lostempireherbs.com/justfly. To try Pine Pollen for FREE (just pay for shipping), head to: justflypinepollen.com View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points: 3:41 – How Kyle’s run training has been developing, since he has been getting back into his two years ago after being a high level college 400m runner 7:41 – Kyle’s thoughts on where we tend to get overly complex in the physical preparation/strength & conditioning industry 11:58 – How Kyle prioritizes exercises based on the task requirements of the athlete 16:19 – Thoughts on working macro-to-micro, versus micro-to-macro 28:50 – How Kyle will avoid trying to regress individuals to a low-level, rudimentary version of an exercise if possible, and his take on “pre-hab” work 36:50 – The usefulness of hill sprints as a “macro” exercise for glutes, lower legs, and hip extension quality 40:56 – The spectrum of perceived complexity as athletes move from a beginner to a more advanced level 48:40 – Kyle’s take on some gym movements that “check a lot of boxes” in athletic movement 56:01 – How much of Kyle’s programming ends up being different on account of being a wide vs. narrow infrasternal angle “If we can’t match the stress that an athlete is going to be encountering in their actual sport, it isn’t going to have a huge return” “I want to be able to pick the biggest return on investment from a training perspective; those are going to go into my primary buckets from a programming perspective” “If I have somebody who really needs to zoom into the micro, and we really need to get into the biomechanics weeds and decrease the training stress, those are people that we refer out to another specialist… having a good network allows you to focus on the things that you are good at and that you really like to do. I learned early in my career that, I don’t like to be the rehab guy” “That’s my problem with the biomechanics led approach, is we take biomechanics down to such a low stimulus” “Passive assessments really don’t give me a lot of information that’s useful” “If a person is pain free, I’m not going to take them through our “glute firing patterns”, I’m just going to re-leverage their strength patterns to create a better pattern for hip extension” “I will do pretty much anything I can to not regress somebody” “The term “pre-hab”, and the way it’s been marketed, I have more of a problem with… if you have a well-rounded program that is individualized to the person in front of you, that’s about as much injury prevention as you can achieve” “The thought process of “pre-hab” I don’t mind that much, it’s the marketing I have a problem with” “You start watching (kids play games with no warmup) and you realize, I might not need to be doing all of the things that I am doing just to prepare to train, and if I do need to be doing those things, then I probably need to change my goal to get to the point where I don’t need to do as much of them” “The end goal of corrective exercise or prehab should be to not have to do it anymore” “Hills in general are the most under-utilized, high yield exercise that more athletes could be using” “I’m a huge proponent of sled pushes, lateral sled drags, backwards sled walks” “For upper body movements, for my athletes, we’re doing a lot of alternating reciprocal stuff” “When I look at pelvis and ribcage orientation, I sneak that in with ab work” “If I can reinforce (my wide ISA needs) from an ab perspective, that’s a much easier and more applicable drill to me than doing some of the classical respiration exercises; and I’m still going to be applying some strategic exhalations while I’m doing those” About Kyle Dobbs Kyle Dobbs is the owner and founder of Compound Performance which offers online training, facility consulting and a personal trainer mentorship. Kyle has trained 15,000+ sessions, been a legitimate six-figure earner as a trainer, managed and developed multiple six-figure earners, and has experienced substantial success as a coach and educator. Kyle has an extensive biomechanics and human movement background which he integrates into his gym prescriptions to help athletes achieve their fullest movement, and transferable strength potential.