What Is Strength? - Brett Jones - #112

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
Oh yes, hello friends. Welcome back to Modern Wisdom. Before we get into today's episode, I wanted to give a big shout out to everyone who's got in touch over the last week and a half or so. After I reposted the video I did on Depression on the Modern Wisdom YouTube channel, and then subsequently the episode I did on Monday with Christoph about mental health in the world of DJing. It's obvious that there is quite a big hunger out there for people to think and learn and have the opportunity to reflect on others' experiences when it comes to things like depression and anxiety. With that in mind, I'm going to make a concerted effort to try and find some more guests and have some very interesting discussions centered around that. It's really cool to hear people resonating with the content and the stuff that we put out. It helps me to understand where I'm adding value and where people need to learn more. So thank you very much for getting in touch. Onto today's episode, it is with Brett Jones, who is the Director of Education at Strong First. And today we're just talking all things strength. Brett works under the legendary Pavel Tatsulin. I'm going to have butchered that surname, but you'll know who he is. Legendary strength coach. And Brett's knowledge is really impressive today, talking about a lot of implications for your training, for your programming, the way that you look at cycling through different periods within strength training. Here's analogies across from CrossFit and weightlifting, and some really good advice to do with kettlebell movements as well. So there's loads of stuff in here. Lots more episodes coming up soon as well. Lifehacks 110 Who else have we got? Sonny Webster. Mr. Sonny Webster is back. He will be back next week. I've already recorded that. Video guide Dean will be putting it together. So expect some big episodes coming up soon. But for now, please welcome Mr. Brett Jones.
I'm joined by Brett Jones, Director of Education at Strong First. Brett, welcome to the show.

**Brett Jones** (2:20)
Excellent, it's great to be with you today, and really looking forward to speaking with you and your audience.

**Chris Williamson** (2:23)
Yeah, me too.
We haven't touched on strength that much yet, not in its purity. We've circled around it a little bit, but we're talking all things strong today, right?

**Brett Jones** (2:34)
Absolutely. Strength has been something I've pursued for most of my adult life in various forms, and I look forward to the conversation on it.

**Chris Williamson** (2:50)
Yeah, it's going to be good. We'll have some crossfitters, some powerlifters tuning in amongst people that just want to be able to lift the shopping a bit. They're shopping a little bit heavier, I guess, as well, so they might benefit as well.

**Brett Jones** (3:01)
Absolutely.

**Chris Williamson** (3:02)
Talking about strength, how do you, as someone who spends his entire time thinking about strength, how do you define strength?

**Brett Jones** (3:09)
So strength can be, so if we first go with this idea of physical strength, that can be your ability to produce tension, your ability to produce force against an outside object, or to manipulate your own body against a given leverage or position. So it's the ability to produce tension, to produce force against an object, and manipulate an object or your own body, like I said. So that's kind of the 30,000-foot view.
If you get into the mechanics of it, there's obviously a lot more going on. When you go beyond physical strength, and that's, you know, within Strong First, one of our, we actually have like a code of conduct. We're students of strength, we're quiet professionals, and we believe that strength has a greater purpose. And the mission of Strong First is to pursue, promote and practice strength, because we believe strength has a greater purpose. And that greater purpose obviously transcends physical strength into many other areas. My grandmother is one of the strongest people that I know of on the planet, and she's never lifted a weight in her life. And so we're not just referring to this concept of physical strength. We do believe that building physical strength can provide a window into greater strength in one's life, in many areas, not just the physical.

**Chris Williamson** (4:41)
I understand. So yeah, you've touched on one of the two taglines, I suppose, or one of the two major elements that Strong First has, which is strength has a greater purpose and strength is the master quality. Is that right?

**Brett Jones** (4:56)
Yes. So if you look at, Medvedev said that strength is a foundation of physical development for all qualities of physical development. So I remember being in a talk with Eric Cressy years ago, and, you know, Eric gave a great analogy. People have tried to give me credit for it. So every time I get an opportunity, I give him credit for it because it's where I heard it. But basically, he said, you know, strength is the glass. Every other quality you want to develop goes in that glass. And so the bigger your glass, the more of those other qualities you can develop. And so strength maintains a focus and a foundation for people's training. And it's interesting right now as physical training has become more, I'm going to go old school here for just a second. So if you look at some of the ancient training systems, and I'm drawing back to the Greeks and the German Turnverein system, and some of the other old training systems, which primarily came from training military and warriors and things of that nature, they really had three main components to them. There was a martial component, which was your ability to respond appropriately to aggression, and you could easily look at that from a martial arts or military perspective, and that makes very good sense. There was a restorative component because learning the martial tended to knock you out of center, and so you needed techniques for health and recovery and regeneration to be able to go do the other stuff again. And then you had a pedagogical body of knowledge that supported the other two. Fitness has become our martial art. Fitness has become the thing, so our pillars of training have switched to where now our training, our fitness has become this thing that we do for itself, whereas we used to get fit to go do other things. The restorative component in the ancient systems was meant to just allow you to go practice the martial stuff more. I'm a very exciting guy. I enjoy hiking, so my training at this point supports my hiking, and not in addition to my own training and training of my students and the teaching that I do at CERTs and things of that nature.