339: DJ Murakami on Breaking Cognitive Training Barriers, Muscle Tensioning, and Winning Each Workout

Today’s episode features strength and performance coach DJ Murakami. DJ has over 15 years of experience in the coaching realm, and has a wide history of movement practice which includes work in bodybuilding, Olympic lifting, rock lifting, movement culture (such as Ido Portal), rock climbing and more. DJ has created training courses such as Chi Torque, the Predator Protocol, and others, and mentors coaches and fitness enthusiasts through his Human Strong training organization. In today’s strength and fitness world, it’s almost easier to tell individuals the things they shouldn’t do than what they should. Given all of the existing systems in strength and performance training, we can create excessive and robotic training programs that take us far from the core of our humanity, and therefore our potential to enjoy, connect with, and adapt to the work we are doing. DJ Murakami is a coach who has studied a massive number of systems and methods, as well as having trained, himself, in a large variety of movement and strength expressions. Through it all, DJ has acquired knowledge on how to make training as effective as possible for each individual without over complicating and over-coaching the process. On the podcast today, he shares his athletic and coaching background, and then goes into how his coaching has evolved into what it is today: a system that prioritizes the “quest” of those he is working with, within each session. He also shares his knowledge of the internal and external muscle torque system (created by Julien Pineau) which can not only simplify the way we look at exercise selection, and the purpose of various movements, but also gives us an effective way to help athletes and individuals embody and understand muscle tensioning in the scope of their athleticism. DJ is a wise coach who walks his talk on a high level in addition to his powerful training insights. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster, Lost Empire Herbs, and the Elastic Essentials online course. 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: 3:32 – The systems and schools of thought DJ has gone through in his career as an athlete and coach 12:51 – DJ’s athletic background, and how his movement practices have helped form his coaching intuition 15:03 – How DJ structures and runs a session now, given his evolution as a coach, and how to allow them a “win” and a positive experience in the training session 20:56 – DJ’s take on coaching and influencing technique as an athlete moves forward in training 23:22 – Making things task oriented, and putting meaning and problem solving into the movement 29:54 – Using things like sandbags as opposed to using barbells in training 32:40 – The concept of internal vs. external torque chains in human movement and strength training 43:47 – Principles behind “chi-torque” and communicating principles of tension to the individual “The best seminar I ever took as far as gains after that leveled me up, was a Jon North seminar…. it was pretty much pumping us up all day, to fear nothing. I hit a bunch of PR’s” “Can you bias someone’s movement output without making it a cognitive task; I think that’s how we learn is stories” “I think people would be surprised at how much (changing mindset) before going into an experience will change things” “I made the mistake of over-coaching early on, no-cebo’ing people, and not building relationships… I learned the hard way of failing and figuring out that working with another human being and not fixing a car in the shop” “Create the least amount of cognitive barriers as possible (to training)” “The goal is always success, let them win at the workout” “With naming an exercise comes a baggage, a history of how they are supposed to do it, pain associated with doing it… that’s our industries fault of no-cebo’ing people to a big extent” “If you want to be successful on Instagram, just tear apart and bash something” “If I want someone to create more internal torque in pressing, I’ll just change the implement, like a sandbag” “Mind-muscle connection gets bashed a lot, but I think that’s really important on an experiential level” “A stone is a strength riddle, there is no metric to a stone, it’s about the task” “I like things that are a little more self-governing, than a barbell, in terms of ways you can do it” “Picking up a weight inside your hands with that false grip compression, is very natural, probably the only way we picked up things if you go back far enough” “If you are creating internal torque you are creating force towards the middle, kind of like compression” “With the torque model, it doesn’t go off of position or even rotation” “The tension in the musculature is what is defining the torque” “A yoke carry is a constraint that is always going to produce external torque” “When you are voluntarily putting energy to flex something with intent, you are moving that energy throughout your body” “My goal is to just get the connection from the (sensation exercises) and then use the tension in your regular exercise” About DJ Murakami DJ Murakami has over 15 years of experience in the coaching realm. He has a wide history of movement practice, including training in bodybuilding, Olympic weightlifting, strongman (rock lifting), movement culture (such as Ido Portal), rock climbing and more. DJ has created training courses such as Chi Torque, the Predator Protocol, and others, and mentors coaches and fitness enthusiasts through his Human Strong training organization.