Transcription
Thank you for coming on to the Basketball Performance Podcast. I really appreciate your time.
Thank you. I'd like to be here. Um, I've been waiting for this episode for a while, and I know that there's a lot that we can learn from you. But before we jump into all the questions, can you just give us a brief, uh, background about yourself, uh, where you're from, and how you got into this field?
Sure. So, I'm the founder of High Priority Fascia Training. We're an organization that, that really, the goal of our organization is to help people break in, recycle. So, if, if you're playing sports, basketball, and you know, you could develop problems with your knee, tendonitis in the knee, you know, problems in the ankles, or even with your shooting accuracy, things like this, we're very good at it because we have a, a very unique, uh, training protocol revolving around fascia and foot and the mechanoreceptors of the foot. So, this is what we're trying to accomplish.
Awesome. And how did you first stumble upon the work that you do today? In the beginning?
Yeah. So, when I first started, uh, you know, I, I live in New York. I had a martial arts background when I was younger. So, when I started playing basketball in New York, real street basketball, I realized I was not good enough. I was losing a lot. So, that made me question, because I, I wasn't like, uh, just the average people. I actually had the martial arts background when I was younger. So, I wondered, what is, what is going on, right? So, I spent a lot of time trying to figure to figure that out. And then, of course, I was injured. I was exposed to the western, uh, weightlifting and, and I was, uh, you know, for, for a brief period of my time, I was very obsessed. And, and the, um, the doctor, during this training period, I also developed a left knee tendonitis, or what's called patellar tendonitis. And the doctor at this time said, "Oh, you need to strengthen your quads. You need to strengthen your muscles around the knee, and then you'll be good." So, I did that. I actually, you know, lifted the weight to, to my body weight, but I still had a problem. But during this process, I realized my performance went down.
So, I, you know, I started to question a lot of things. And then at this same time, I, you know, you know, when you play basketball, you meet friends, right? I met a very good friend, and, uh, he, excuse me, he turns out to be fascia driven. What I now know is fascial driven. Very lanky, very skinny, extremely athletic, and he had no, he had no knee issues whatsoever. And, uh, he was more so athletic than a lot of the, the black kids on the block. So, I'm, you know, we were working out, and he was lifting way less than I did. I was lifting way more, but I had no performance, I had no accuracy, but he had everything. So, and I was like, "Okay, this is, there's no way that the, the performance comes from the muscle. There's, there's something else." So, this is where it first began of my journey of this work, of this research. And then what I eventually realized that his feet is completely different. His feet are, are completely built differently. And, uh, I was trying to, I was trying to find a way to copy what he had in his feet. And this is really the reverse engineering work of, of, of me, of High Priority Training, why we do this way, right? And eventually, that led me to look into the feet of elite athletes like, for example, LeBron James, uh, a lot of, for LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, and all these great, great, uh, elite level athletes. And it came to my shocking, uh, understanding or, or discovery that these people, they don't, they don't use their feet the same way that regular people do.
Um, and this is not just in the basketball world, but it's across the entire spectrum of sports. So, so we're talking about tennis, we're talking about, um, soccer, we're talking about football, baseball. Um, a lot of the elite level athletes have this type of special foot, which we now know as, as fascial molded feet. And, you know, that's how, how I begin. Sorry, it was, you know, it's a little long, but that's how we started to look into this.
I, as you're talking, I'm just scribbling so many extra questions down for you. So, you said that you started with, um, let's just call it a traditional strength and conditioning approach when you were trying to get better at basketball, um, by strengthening the muscles that you have, traditional lifts, squat, bench, deadlift, all that kind of stuff. Initially, did it help you at all? And if it did, do you have any theories on why it initially helped you and then it sounds like you said it kind of tapered off? Or if, um, it might have even been a little bit detrimental to your performance? But did you see any gains in the beginning?
Yes, it was definitely in the beginning, uh, especially, I would say the first, uh, four to five weeks. Yep. It was very obvious that, uh, you know, I was, I was stronger. I was stronger. And, uh, but the more I trained strength-wise, as my numbers kept on going up, the, the things started to change. Yep. And, um, so that's when I, when I realized that. Also, what I noticed is that I developed other types of injuries. That's, that's really what made me question the approach because I never before, I never really had shin splints. I never had, um, I never had groin issues. I never had IT band issues, lower back issues. But that, that all started to happen very, very, you know, like gradually, one by one. And I was like, "What's going on? You know, I'm getting very strong, but why am I developing these types of problems?" And well, my other friend, he never had any problems, even though he lifted really, he didn't lift as much. But one, there's one lift that, that he was very good at, which is a deadlift. He could, he could lift a lot on that. But he, it was, it was horrible for him, but he could lift a lot on that. But any other, like, you know, bench press or, or, um, um, squat, he, he couldn't, he couldn't do as much as me.
So, interesting. Because I feel like people like you and I, who are so curious, and we look at many different things on, like, "Why is this guy never lifts, I lift, but his performance is better than mine? Like, what's going on here?" So, I, I love this. Can you talk about, I think this is tied into a fascial driven athlete. What makes someone be able to move well? And what's something that makes someone else, uh, that maybe doesn't move so well? Is it what you would call a fascial driven athlete?
Right. So, now, now, after 10 years of research and work, we now understand a lot about the, the human body and how it works. Um, the fascial driven body is really on, it's, it's different on a cellular level. So, um, let me try to make it easier for people to understand. The, the foot is actually where everything starts. Now, the foot naturally, if you think about how naturally people are supposed to, humans are supposed to develop the foot, we developed naturally without any interference or any shoe, right? So, if you, if you're developing your foot in such a fashion without any type of interference, you are actually stimulating the fascia because underneath the foot is your plantar fascia. Now, the plantar fascia is not just a connective tissue, but more importantly, is a sensory organ. We have to understand it as a sensory organ. We cannot just understand, "Okay, yeah, it's just the bottom of the foot." No, the sensory organ just is just as important as our eye, as our ears, as our tongue. So, the entire, the entire goal of the sensory organ is, number one, understand how much force you're delivering to the ground, how much force you need to absorb, and how much connective tissue strength you need to have in your body to withstand everything that the nature gives you, right?
So, imagine if you, if you were developing this on the streets of Brazil. So, this is how a lot of these, uh, uh, soccer athletes, the, the professional athletes develop. They're in Brazil, they're barefooted, running around on concrete, um, uh, floors, or any type of terrain. They're, they're developing since a young age. There are socioeconomic factors to this. So, they're usually poor. That's why you hear the story, "rags to riches," a lot in basketball, in different types of sports, always well, because they never had, they developed without the shoe. But why is this so important? Because if you develop without the shoe, the sensory organ gets a large amount of stimulation during the developmental years of, of the athlete. Now, this is something that average people don't go through. So, why is this so important? Because the develop, the, what we understand now is that this developmental stages of stimulation to the plantar fascia increases, increases the neurological control of your fascia entirely in the body, not just, okay, not just the foot, but more importantly, into your glutes and core. And we now know also from dissection that the glutes is more than 75 to 84.5 fascial inserts. So, just imagine how much, how much connection you can build to the glutes. Now, the elite athlete, or the professional athlete, or even Division One athlete, their glutes are completely different than average people. That's not because they lifted more weights. That's because they use their feet differently. Their feet received enough stimulation from the, from the, the fascia itself, what I call the fascial stimulation, or you can say fascial tensioning. And this type of tensioning, of the fascial stimulation, creates upstream fascial connection to the glutes, to the core. So, now, when the body is more holistically connected, you get power, you get accuracy, you're going to have a less chance of injury, and you become more effortless.
That's so good. Like, a lot of it makes sense. And I'm just thinking in my head, a lot of it is proprioceptive driven, since you're talking about mechanoreceptors, sensory receptors, and it all starts from the feet. Most of us, most of our movement is bottom-up driven. The foot has to hit the floor. There's a lot of ground reaction force that is going on. You're dealing with mass, momentum, and gravity, and all this kind of physics and stuff like that. But you talk, so my next question would be then, what do these athletes' feet have in common? Because I mean, growing up in both America and Hong Kong, you know, you look at basketball players, you have these thick socks, you have basketball shoes that have this, this, like, the soles are this thick. And that's what I'm seeing. But how, how do some of these players' feet develop a little bit differently? I'm very curious to know.
Right. I, I don't know if you have, uh, you can share any pictures here, but, uh, the, the foot, basically, you will see a lot of, uh, um, I have a, actually, I have a before and after picture of what the hyper fascia training will do to the feet. So, so the before, you know, you, and you will see like, any type of traditional type of foot where, you know, you just see the toes are straight. Yep. There's no really, you don't see any tendons on the top of the, of the foot, right? Also, around the ankle area, it's round. There is no, um, the, what's called the, uh, prominence of the anterior tibial tendon. So, so this is like a normal, average person's foot. Now, when you're talking about elite athletes, you will notice that, number one, very importantly, that the anterior tibial tendon is extremely prominent and thick. And this tendon will go to, what? This tendon's job is to directly stabilize the arch of the foot. And also, on the top of the foot, you will notice that, even in the relaxed fashion, meaning they're not putting any strength in the foot, you will see there's a lot of display of the extensor tendons. Yes. So, just like our hands, right? Like you can see on my hands, I have a display of my tendons here. And this display of the tendon is because the fascia wrapped around, they're very tightly integrated with the tendon itself. So, now, when I move, it's not a really a muscular type of move. It's also an effortless type of move. And this is what we call as fascial driven type of movement. Okay. So, the foot after training, you will see there's a tremendous difference because the, uh, the tendons will become more prominent because of the increased level of fascial integrity strength. So, that means the integration is much tighter, much, much stronger. And, and the, the toes, some, in some cases, the toes will will naturally curl, just like our fingers. Because if you are standing up, and I ask you to stand, right? I ask you to stand straight, your hands will be on your, on your legs, on the side of the legs. Now, you look at your fingers, they're not going to be that straight. They're going to be curled. Yep. Right? So, similarly, because the, the function of the hand is to grab, the feet actually have similar functions. When you actually use it correctly, you also have tremendous amount of gripping power.
So, how is it that some, um, players have this? And I'm sure the players, a lot of the players that have this, don't necessarily know the work they don't do. Yeah, they don't. So, it's just natural. They're born with it. Okay, got it. And, and then therefore, people like me have to have to actively look up and find, find this kind of information, right? I mean, this, this is, this is two factors. It's not, it's never just nature. No, nurture. There's always nature and nurture. People can be born, because this thing is neurological, people can be born with a foot that is more, that's easier to, to channel the mechanism, which I call the hyper arc mechanism. Yep. They can, they can be born, born naturally with this type of foot. Now, that means when they're very young, they start to, even though they don't have too much big muscles, they already display elite level athleticism. Okay. And then there is the nurture part. So, if this, this type of athlete, or you have a different degree of this expression of the hyper arc mechanism, without the nurturing, do they become great athletes? No, they don't. You still need the nurturing, meaning they still have to train. But usually, what happens is that these people, when they are gifted in a young age, they find, "Oh, this is so effortless. This is so easy. It's a video game. I throw the ball, and it keeps on going in. This is fun." And other people can do it. So, these people are encouraged to play more games. And then that will, that will solve this nurturing part, because you only want to do things that you're good at, right? You're not going to do things that you're bad at. Yes. So, this is what happens. So, so these type of elite athletes get better year after year because the fascial integration into their body, to the glutes, to the core, it just went through the roof. I mean, we actually did a lot of EMG studies and, and tests, uh, in different periods of, uh, this fascia metamorphosis within the body, and to see what it, you know, how much you can improve. And what is, what's like, uh, that's really the, the importance of the work is to understand, you know, how long it takes for someone like, for example, don't have this connection in younger teenagers, and how do you build it? How many years it takes? And what happens? And it turns out that we actually had a study case with a, a kid in New Jersey. He had chronic knee pain. We took him from year 13. He was 13 years old. But by two years later, he was, he was already very good. He was knocking down shots, he was dunking. And then five years later, he, he got to Division One basketball, Fairleigh Dickinson, FDU. So, so once that happened, I know this work has, has ground. You know, so, so I invested more to help people and try to bring this to more and more people.
That's amazing. And so, I guess the follow-up question has to be then, what is this hyper-arc mechanism?
Yeah. The hyper arc mechanism is actually, it's actually a very unique mechanism that mainstream, again, they don't, they don't tell you this. If you go to any, they don't, they don't know about this, and they don't, they don't admit it exists, but it does. It's, it's actually a very simple mechanism. So, this is the foot, right? The mechanism, what it does is it stabilizes the arch and stabilizes the, the ankle from any type of sprain. You cannot sprain it. It basically locks up the ankle through the connective tissue, the retinaculum, the, the fascia tissue integration around the ankle. Why is this possible? Because that's a natural function of the, of the joints of the ankle, just like our hands, right? I can stabilize my wrist. I can lock up my wrist. If I start to put tension in my fingers, okay, I can, I can lock my hands. I'm not going to be able to move my wrist. It's not going to turn in any direction. Similarly speaking, the hyper arc mechanism will stabilize your entire ankle through the connection of fascia, fascia strength, not through muscular means, but through the fascia means. When that happens, the foot will have tension, just like our hands have tension. When you move with this, this tension, it connects to your glutes, connects to your core, through the fascial connection. Your body is moving like a tensegrity structure. So, this way, you're not just, you're not just like a, you're not built like a, um, brick on brick type of thing, but you are built like a tensegrity structure where you can absorb force and then you can channel it in different ways without, without the entire structure collapsing. So, you're moving as a whole, as an entire, a holistic unit. So, that's, that's the basis of this mechanism.
And so, what my next question would be after listening to that is, how do you make the training, um, become subconscious rather than them consciously doing it, if that makes sense? So, like, yeah, I go and I do, I work on my hyper arc mechanism, I'm seeing good results, but when I step onto the basketball court, as you very well know, I'm not thinking about my feet. I'm thinking about the task, I'm thinking about the ball, I'm thinking about the defender, I'm thinking about all these things. How do we make it so it becomes subconscious and my body can just adjust, right?
So, that's, that's, that's a very important question that when I started this work, I asked this question, right? So, how do we train it? Well, first, I, I did myself. I have to experiment myself. Is this possible? It is possible. You have to really train the feet to, to make the feet understand when you are moving, you need to be activating the mechanism properly. But what, what is very interesting is the fascia. Because you, when you are giving fascia signals, right? Initially, its conscious signals. These conscious signals, stimulation into the fascia, will convert the cell from the standard fibroblast cells into a different type of cell called myofibroblasts. Now, the myofibroblast, guess what? It can contract by itself. So, over time, guess what? Your foot will actually change because it will actually engage automatically by itself. So, your training period is short-lived because your training period is basically trying to deliver the message to the fascia that you need to be activated in a certain way, and then from there, the fascia will take over. So, it is, it is possible to do so. So, you, one part of my training is, before any type of basketball drills, we do the hyper fascia training for an hour, and then after that, we go to, you know, standard basketball skill training, shooting, running, and all that type of drills. When that happens, you can increase the glute connection permanently. When the glute response increases permanently, the person's basketball level increases permanently.
That makes sense. So, it's more of a, it's, okay, everything is neurological and structural, but it's very, a lot of it is very much structural. So, that when you go, right, when you go, it actually, because now it's totally used to how you're training it, it can just fire automatically. Is that what you're, you're kind of saying?
Right. So, basically, you program the, the brain, program the fascia to work in this fashion, then you understand, just like how the natural athletes are developed, right? So, they're developing because their foot are constantly hitting the ground, and then the floor gave its signal and tell it, "Oh, you gotta, you have to have more fascial strength." Right? But now we're saying, "Okay, the people are developed. Now we missed that developmental stage. Now let's say, let me try to override it with even stronger signal, but consciously, into your foot through the hyper arc mechanism." Yes. Can you achieve the same result? The answer is absolutely yes. And it doesn't matter what age you are. Of course, the younger age, the younger you are, the easier to develop because everything hasn't been said yet. You're still developing. So, like, if I work with somebody who's 10, they find this very simple. They're like, "Okay, I just do it." Like, they, they can, they can replicate very simple, very easily. They're, their fascia, the, because they don't have big muscles anyway, so their, their movement is more fascial driven anyway. But as they develop older, let's say if they had, you know, weight training years of weight training, those people are going to be a little harder to reprogram. Yes. But, but in general, if you are putting in the work, we have a 12-week programming period. If you are putting in the work week by week, you will see big differences after the 12 weeks.
How much, and it has to play a big part, does nutrition play into this entire thing? And can you give us some examples of things to eat that will help and things definitely not to eat that will definitely be detrimental to where we want to go?
So, the nutrition part of thing, this is very interesting because again, you, you look into how the elite athletes develop, right? So, they're poor. So, what type of food did they eat when they were developing? They had rarely any meals. Yep. Yeah. Fast food or what? Rarely. Sometimes they don't have the money to eat, right? So, when you don't have the money to eat, guess what? That's, that's actually triggers intermittent fasting. So, what I realized is when we had a study case, we had, uh, two groups. We had one, one group of athletes, which is regular, just regular white kids. And we had another group that who are religious, they're Muslims, so doing the Ramadan, which means they're, they're doing intermittent fasting. They actually progressed the most in their performance. Interesting. So, what that tells you, it answers the very important question is that intermittent fasting will help neurogenesis and in this type of process, it also helps the person developing the fascial connection. Very, very interesting. Now, there's other, other side, like to answer the other question, like what you shouldn't be eating too much of, that is sugar. You shouldn't be eating just the, you know, candy or, or processed sugar too much because the sugar will influence the, the viscosity of fascia, makes it very sticky over time. And when this, when your fascia stop sliding properly underneath your body, it will create compensation patterns. And this compensation patterns are quietly, quietly hiding inside your body. You don't know unless you start to roll the body, following a holistic approach. You, that's why we have this, we created a fascia chart. You actually roll different spots, specific spots in the body to find out if you have any fascial adhesions. So, if you eat too much sugar, over time, your body will compensate. Just, there might not be a problem in the first months. It might not be a problem in the second month. It might not be a problem for a year, but eventually, it will catch up to you, and then you're going to get injured. And when you get injured, you will know exactly where the fascia adhesions are by following that chart. And you're like, "You know what happened? Oh, I have a lot of fascia adhesions. Just never, never being addressed." Now, the people who, who generally don't suffer any type of injuries and have a very good, um, very good season, we keep the fascial adhesions very low, like zero or one. We always make sure, "Okay, there's no fascial adhesions." So, this will ensure that themselves, they don't have any compensation patterns. They're not going to injure themselves. So, for example, non-contact injury, right? They're not going to just magically, uh, you know, pull a tendon or pull a hamstring. We're not talking about contact injuries. So, contact injuries are a little, a little different, but non-contact-wise, they generally have a better, better, um, less risk of, of suffering those type of injuries.
So, what are a few pointers or tips that you can give our listeners that they can do, maybe just one thing before they get into their basketball practice or basketball games that can, um, elevate their performance or prevent injuries, especially when it comes to, you know, warming up with a foot?
Sure. I mean, I created the, um, three things that they can do very safely. So, the first thing is, you can start rolling the body with the, with the tennis ball. Start with the bottom of the foot, and then the calf, and then the glutes, right? And then the quads. The lower body-wise, you want to make sure you're adhesion-free. Even if you have some, it's fine. Understand where they are. And then you do the hyper fascia exercises to get rid of them over time. The, the second thing is, you do the elevated toe curls. So, all this information I share, it's on my Instagram. I, I created the icon. You can go in, you can see what they are, what these exercises are, but I'm going to briefly describe it. So, the hyper arc elevated toe curls is basically you're standing with your heel raised, and you're trying to press down the ball of the foot only on the towel, and you're trying to use your toes to to grab the towel and release, grab and release, grab and release. So, what this does, I, I did a very interesting, uh, test. What this actually does is actually encourage the fascia from the bot, from the plantar fascia to the gluteal fascia to to slide and then move as a holistic unit. Now, the people, average people who don't have too much of fascial connection from the feet to the glutes, guess what? They're not going to feel anything in the glutes. They're not going to feel anything in the hamstring. They basically do it, and then they feel fatigued in their foot, and that's it. We tested with, uh, Division One professional athletes, as well as a world's highest jumper, highest leaper, there is Clark. Within 10 seconds, he had the glute response just by doing the elevated toe curls. Why? Because the fascial connection is extremely responsive and connected. So, he's able to channel, just by moving the toes slightly for 10 seconds, his glutes upstream will have a response.
I'm just thinking about you said a towel, right? You mentioned a towel. So, do you know those like little machines that you can pull your toe against? It's like there's a sling at the bottom and you, it's kind of like a bore. Yeah, I know. Yeah, I know what you're talking about. Does that work as well? Or can you do it with that? Or does it, is a towel better? Because I'm, I don't know about this, so I'm just thinking of different methods, right? That that does something. But that, that defeats the purpose because that defeats the purpose of putting the foot in the right configuration of contacting the ground. So, that is just like, "Okay, I'm moving, I'm exercising the foot." Yes. Our goal is not just exercising the foot. Our goal is actually to configure the foot so you can hit the ground in the right, right position. Okay, I see. I understand. So, that means the heel has to be raised, and then the ball of the foot has to be touching on the ground, and you're only moving the toes. But what, what you're saying in that example with that was that machine where you are trying to grab everything, right? That basically put the pushes the toes underneath the ball of the foot. Yes. So, so when you do that, that's not configuring the foot into the right hyper arc configuration. Nice. That's just moving the, the toe. Right. You see the difference? One is you're trying, you're trying to create the specific type of foot so you can, you can contact the ground properly. The other one is just simply moving the toes, but the configuration of the toes are still in the wrong position. Got it.
Well, I'm very excited to learn more about this because this is something that I need to learn about dealing with, uh, different athletes and basketball players. Where do you feel like the field of athletic performance is moving, um, now? And what do you think that, what are some of the things that we could dive more into in order to allow our athletes to become the best that they can be?
I mean, that, this is why I'm doing this work because this work excites me so much because from what I've seen, we can actually, for the first time in, in, I don't know how long, we can make professional athletes, and it's, it's a very high probability, probability by not following the weightlifting way, but by starting training the natural way of the fascia, of the fascial development. Once you can, you can replicate how the natural athlete are developed, obviously, you can generate, you can create natural athletes. And it doesn't really matter what their, you know, how, how what they are born or what their, you know, uh, if they didn't have this mechanism in the, in the first place, you can develop it. But of course, it requires a lot of time, a lot of dedication, a lot of investment. This is not easy. It's not an easy type of work. Sure. I mean, this is not just, "Okay, here's a way, go lift." This is more of, "Okay, 12 weeks, are you progressing? When you do the exercise, are you getting the sensation in the right areas? Are you, is your body giving you the right response?" Because I work with so many types of athletes, I realize one thing is that no one has the same type of fascial connection. They're all very, very different, very, very unique. And everyone responds to the stimulus, or fascial stimulation, very, very differently. Some people, they can progress, progress, progress in the, um, I would say, relatively fast. Yep. But some people, if they are, let's say, when they were six and thirteen, they just play video games and have been stagnant at home all day, and then now they're 25, they want to be a basketball player. That's like almost impossible because the glutes response, because the sensory organ, again, it's all about developmental stages. The sensory organ hasn't really been developed when they were young. So, it's very hard for them, even though they receive stimulation, even though they receive the, the proper stimulation to the, to the organ, it doesn't come online very easily. But let's say if someone who's, you know, very active from six to thirteen, right? It's not difficult. It's not difficult to rekindle this connection and make this connection grow stronger. And then once you get this fascial connection stronger and stronger and stronger, that person will produce elite type of results. And we have seen it. It's very exciting. They don't, they don't miss. They just don't miss. We actually had a competition of a kid that I trained, uh, with a Division One athlete. And he, he actually, you know, you know the five shots, how NBA? Five spots, five shots. If you, if you make it, you continue to shoot it. If you miss, you let the other person shoot, right? No, there were a few spots he doesn't miss. So, he was able to beat that guy. We've seen it. It's, it's just incredible. Also, also, there's a very, very interesting thing that I discovered through this work is that because of the fascial connection difference, because of the athleticism difference, everyone at a certain stage of this fascial development will have to use different shooting cues to make sure that the shot goes in consistently. I'll give you an example. There are four levels of fascial connection one, one person can can achieve, right? So, so let me just briefly go through them so you understand this a little bit better. So, the first level is, okay, you can, you can engage the foot and make sure your ankle is stabilized, right? So, you don't have ankle sprains. That's the first fundamental level. Level two, you can start to have some glute connection. You can feel the glutes in certain movements, but not all. Level three is when your glutes can contract very strongly through the fascial connection because your foot, you're consciously inputting signal into your foot. Okay? So, basically, your foot to glute connection is established. The next stage is the core and glutes. That means not only your, your glutes are engaged rock solid, your core and glutes both can engage, and they become subconsciously activated through movement. This is where it answers a very interesting question is why Russell Westbrook is more, much less, more athletic, but he doesn't have a stable shot like, sorry, who, who did you say? Russell Westbrook? Is that what you said? Yes. Oh, yes. Okay. So, he's more athletic, right? But he doesn't have a stable shot as, uh, Steph Curry. Sure. Now, Steph Curry is less, less like, why is he shooting better and more accurate, right? Of course, practice is one thing, right? But a very important thing is how the glutes activate. The, there's a very interesting question in basketball is why do some people, they shoot, they have to jump and shoot, right? They have more elevation issues, yeah, and they can generate power, yes. But why some people, they cannot do that, and they have to shoot the shot, basically, they only have a little bit of lift, yes. And it turns out, has to to do with the fascial connection. Because, because the people who have higher fascial connection, meaning like they, they can use the core to glute connection, they tend to jump and shoot. Interesting. But the people who don't have the core to glute connection, very strongly built, but since they can use their glutes, they will use their glutes to shoot. So, you don't have to be very athletic, and you can still be a very, very good shooter, as long as you use the right shooting cue. That means you can, as long as you engage your glutes properly, and you put your glutes into that shot, that shot is going in.
So, can I just confirm what you're saying? You're saying, like, say, for example, because I can think of, say, Devin Booker, who doesn't need to jump very high to make the shot. He doesn't jump very much at all, right? Um, would he be, so if you're jumping very high when you're shooting, you are more fascial driven, or less fascial driven? You're more fascial driven. So, that that means your core to glute, this connection is better. Okay. That means you can deliver power while you're, while your body's hands in the air, right? In the air, you can, you can deliver, you can deliver power. Now, there are people who cannot do that. They simply cannot do it. They, they jump, they shoot, there's no power, right? Right. So, they have to shoot more on a, on a, um, they have to shoot pretty much their foot has to be on the floor all the time. But this is, this doesn't mean they don't use their glutes. They can still use their glutes, yeah, and they can still shoot accurately. Okay. Okay. I'm talking about Westbrook versus Curry. This is a very good example. Westbrook likes to jump and shoot, yes. But can Westbrook be turned into somebody like Curry? Absolutely. He can use a different shooting cue, and he starts shooting accurately too, but he doesn't know because most athletes, again, elite athletes, they're built naturally. So, it's, they just feel what they have, what they feel is easy for them, they just do it. But there's a lot of intricacies in how the fascial connection developed and how you shoot. So, for example, if I try, if I were to train an NBA player or Division One player, depending on that person's fascial fitness level and fascial connection, I'll give them a different shooting cue than someone who's like in high school or junior high school or teenager because their core to glute connection is not there. They cannot use those type of cues. So, they have to use a different type of shooting cue to engage the glutes. Once their glutes engage, they can shoot. So, it's a developmental, it's a developmental stages. But this is very different than the mainstream approach because the mainstream, they would say, "Okay, you gotta focus on your hand, your form, uh, maybe sweep and sway." They talk about that a little bit, but sweep and sway of the, of the body when you shoot, that the body starts to sweep and sway forward. This actually a naturalistic, um, effect of the tensegrity structure because you, if you're, if you're using core and glutes to shoot, right, your body naturally will sway forward. This is very interesting stuff.
Well, you've been very generous with your time. I just have a couple more questions. And you mentioned this, you mentioned you've tapped on this, but what is the impact that you want to leave on our field? Again, like, you've mentioned this before, but just as we're closing, like, what is the, the impact that you want to leave on the athletic performance field?
Well, I want to be the number one in the world. That's, that's why I do this because I believe this, this work can be the number one. I mean, if we keep on producing champions, not just basketball, and we keep on healing people, right? So, you know, people who have like back pain for 15 years, plantar fasciitis for 15 years, they're not, they're not getting better with the mainstream approach, but getting better with High Priority Fascia Training. I'm one step closer to my goal because there is a better solution out there.
Awesome, awesome. And the last thing is, where can people find you to get more information? Like, you've shared today.
Yeah. Uh, on YouTube, I have a YouTube channel, Trunks here, Coach Chong. They can find me, High Priority Fascia Training on YouTube. Also, on Instagram, they can find me by the handle, Secret of Athleticism, or Coach Chong, or Break Injury Cycle. Any, any way they search me, they can find it.
Awesome. Thank you so much for coming onto the podcast. I'm very grateful. Just hold the line, and we'll see you next week, guys. Thank you.